William  0.  Post, 

Los  Gates, 
Santa  Clara  Co.        Calif. 


THE  UNIVERSAL  KINSHI? 


UNIVERSAL   KINSHIP 


•T 


J.    HOWARD    MOORE 

WmUCTOR   IN  1OOLOGY,   CRANK  MANUAL   TRAINING    MICH 
CHICAGO 


'  A  Sacred  Kinship  I  would  not  forego 
Binds  me  to  all  that  breathes.' 

BOYESKN. 


CHICAGO 

CHARLES   H.  KERR  A  COMPANY 
1916 


JOHN    F.  H1GGINS 

PRINTER  AND  BINDER 


376-382   MONROE  STREET 
CHICAGO.     ILLINOIS 


TO 

MY   DEAR    MOTHER    AND    FATHER 

WHO  HAVE  DONE  SO  MUCH   FOR  ME  IN  THE 

LONG  YEARS 
THAT  ARE  PAST  AND  CONK 


PREFACE 

% 

THE  Universal  Kinship  means  the  kinship  of  all 
the  inhabitants  of  the  planet  Earth.  Whether 
they  came  into  existence  among  the  waters  or 
among  desert  sands,  in  a  hole  in  the  earth,  in  the 
hollow  of  a  tree,  or  in  a  palace ;  whether  they 
build  nests  or  empires ;  whether  they  swim,  fly, 
crawl,  or  ambulate;  and  whether  they  realise  it 
or  not,  they  are  all  related,  physically,  mentally, 
morally — this  is  the  thesis  of  this  book.  But 
since  man  is  the  most  gifted  and  influential  oi 
animals,  and  since  his  relationship  with  other 
animals  is  more  important  and  more  reluctantly 
recognised  than  any  other,  the  chief  purpose  of 
these  pages  is  to  prove  and  interpret  the  kinship 
of  the  human  species  with  the  other  species  of 
animals. 

The  thesis  of  this  book  comes  pretty  squarely 
in  conflict  with  widely-practised  and  highly-prized 
sins.  It  will  therefore  be  generally  criticised 
where  it  is  not  passed  by  in  silence.  Men  as  a 
rule  do  not  care  to  improve.  Although  they  have 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

but  one  life  to  live,  they  are  satisfied  to  live  the 
thing  out  as  they  have  started  on  it. 

Enthusiasm,  which  in  an  enlightened  or  ideal 
race  would  be  devoted  to  self-improvement,  is  used 
by  men  in  weaving  excuses  for  their  own  inertia 
or  in  singing  of  the  infirmities  of  others. 

But  there  is  a  Future.  And  the  creeds  and  ideals 
men  bow  down  to  to-day  will  in  time  to  come 
pass  away,  and  new  creeds  and  ideals  will  claim 
their  allegiance.  Shrines  change  as  the  genera- 
tions come  and  go,  and  out  of  the  decomposition 
of  the  old  comes  the  new.  The  time  will  come 
when  the  sentiments  of  these  pages  will  not  be 
hailed  by  two  or  three,  and  ridiculed  or  ignored 
by  the  rest ;  they  will  represent  Public  Opinion  and 
Law. 

M. 

CHICAGO,  1905. 


CONTENTS 

\ 

THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

PAOB 

I.  MAN  AN  ANIMAL                                  •              -  •          J 

II.   MAN  A  VERTEBRATE           .               .               -  .          7 

III.  MAN  A   MAMMAL    -               •               -               •  12 

IV.  MAN  A  PRIMATE    -               -               •               •  -14 
V.   RECAPITULATION   -  26 

VI.  THE  MEANING  OF  HOMOLOGY  -  -  ,  •  28 

VII.  THE  EARTH  AN  EVOLUTION  •  '3° 

mi.  THE  FACTORS  OF  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION-  •  35 

IX.  THE  EVIDENCES  OF  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  -  38 

X.  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  •  "74 

XI.  CONCLUSION             •              •              •              -  -97 

THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

I.  THE  CONFLICT  OF  SCIENCE  AND  TRADITION  -      IO$ 

II,  EVIDENCES  OF   PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION    -  -      IIO 

III.  THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW  -      146 

IV.  THE    ELEMENTS    OF    HUMAN    AND    NON-HUMAN 

MIND  COMPARED             -              -              •  -     196 

V.  CONCLUSION             •              •              •               -  -233 

b 


THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

MM 

I.   HUMAN  NATURE  A  PRODUCT  OF  THE  JUNGLE  •  245 

II.  EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM     -                             -  247 

III.  THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  SAVAGE        -               -               -  2$2 

IV.  THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  ANCIENT     -              -              -  258 
V.  MODERN  ETHICS    -                             ...  267 

VI.  THE  ETHICS  OF  HUMAN  BEINGS  TOWARDS  NON- 

HUMAN  BEINGS                                              -              •  272 

VII.  THE  ORIGIN  OF  PROVINCIALISM                 -              -  282 

VIII.  UNIVERSAL  ETHICS              -              -               -               -  2QI 
IX.  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM                 -               -  296 

X.  ANTHROPOCENTRIC  ETHICS            ...  314 

XI.  ETHICAL  IMPLICATIONS  OF  EVOLUTION                •  319 

XII.  CONCLUSION             -                                                             •  324 


THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

PACK 

I.  MAN  AM  ANIMAL  -      •      •      •  •    3 

II.  MAN  A  VERTEBRATE     •  •    7 

III.  MAN  A  MAMMAL         •             .  .    12 

IV.  MAN  A  PRIMATE    •              •              «•              •  •        14 
V.   RECAPITULATION   -              •              -              •  -26 

VI.  THE  MEANING  OF  HOMOLOGY      -              -  -28 

VII.  THE  EARTH  AN  EVOLUTION           •               •  -30 

VIII.  THE  FACTORS  OF  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  -  -       35 

IX.  THE  EVIDENCES  OF  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  •        38 

X.  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      •              •  74 

XI.  CONCLUSION                            -              •              -  -97 


'  LIKE  the  Roman  emperors,  who,  intoxicated  by  their 
power,  at  length  regarded  themselves  as  demigods,  so  the 
ruler  of  the  earth  believes  that  the  animals  subjected  to  his 
will  have  nothing  in  common  with  his  own  nature.  Man  is 
not  content  to  be  the  king  of  animals.  He  insists  on  having 
it  that  an  impassable  gulf  separates  him  from  his  subjects. 
The  affinity  of  the  ape  disturbs  and  humbles  him.  And, 
turning  his  back  upon  the  earth,  he  flies,  with  his  threatened 
majesty,  into  the  cloudy  sphere  of  a  special  "human 
kingdom."  But  Anatomy,  like  those  slaves  who  followed 
the  conqueror's  car  crying,  "  Thou  art  a  man,"  disturbs  him 
in  his  self-admiration,  and  reminds  him  of  those  plain  and 
tangible  realities  which  unite  him  with  the  animal  world.' — 
BROCA. 


William  0.  Post, 

Los  Gatos, 
Santa  Clara  Co.         Calif. 


THE  UNIVERSAL  KINSHIP 


THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

I.  Man  an  Animal. 

IT  was  in  the  zoology  class  at  college.  We  had 
made  all  the  long  journey  from  amoeba  to  coral, 
from  coral  to  worm,  from  worm  to  mollusk,  from 
mollusk  to  fish,  from  fish  to  reptile,  and  from 
reptile  to  mammal — and  there,  in  the  closing  pages 
of  faithful  old  Packard,  we  found  it.  '  A  mammal 
of  the  order  of  primates,'  the  book  said,  with  that 
unconcern  characteristic  of  the  deliverances  of 
science.  I  was  almost  saddened.  It  was  the 
first  intimation  I  had  ever  received  of  that  trite 
but  neglected  truth  that  man  is  an  animal. 

But  the  intimation  was  so  weak,  and  I  was  at 
that  time  so  unconscious,  that  it  was  not  till  years 
later  that  I  began,  through  reflection,  actually  to 
realise  the  truth  here  first  caught  sight  of.  During 
these  years  I  knew  that  man  was  not  a  mineral 
nor  a  plant — that,  indeed,  he  belonged  to  the 

3  1—2 


4  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

animal  kingdom.  But,  like  most  men  still,  I 
continued  to  think  of  him  as  being  altogether 
different  from  other  animals.  I  thought  of  man 
and  the  animals,  not  of  man  and  the  other  animals. 
Man  was  somehow  sui  generis.  He  had  had,  I 
believed,  a  unique  and  miraculous  origin ;  for  I 
had  not  yet  learned  of  organic  evolution.  The 
pre-Darwinian  belief  that  I  had  come  down  from 
the  skies,  and  that  non-human  creatures  of  all 
kinds  had  been  brought  into  existence  as  adjuncts 
of  the  distinguished  species  to  which  I  belonged, 
occupied  prominent  place  in  my  thinking.  Non- 
human  races,  so  I  had  been  taught,  had  in  them- 
selves no  reason  for  existence.  They  were  acces- 
sories. A  chasm,  too  wide  for  any  bridge  ever  to 
span,  yawned  between  the  human  and  all  other 
species.  Man  was  celestial,  a  blue-blood  barely 
escaping  divinity.  All  other  beings  were  little 
higher  than  clods.  So  faithfully  and  mechanically 
did  I  reflect  the  bias  in  which  I  had  grown  up. 

But  man  is  an  animal.  It  was  away  out  there 
on  the  prairies,  among  the  green  corn  rows,  one 
beautiful  June  morning — a  long  time  ago  it  seems 
to  me  now — that  this  revelation  really  came  to 
me.  And  I  repeat  it  here,  as  it  has  grown  to 
seem  to  me,  for  the  sake  of  a  world  which  is  so 
wise  in  many  things,  but  so  darkened  and  way- 
ward regarding  this  one  thing.  However  averse 
to  accepting  it  we  may  be  on  account  of  favourite 
traditions,  man  is  an  animal  in  the  most  literal 
and  materialistic  meaning  of  the  word.  Man  has 
not  a  spark  of  so-called  '  divinity  '  about  him.  In 


MAN  AN  ANIMAL  5 

important  respects  he  is  the  most  highly  evolved 
of  animals ;  but  in  origin,  disposition,  and  form  he 
is  no  more  '  divine '  than  the  dog  who  laps  his 
sores,  the  terrapin  who  waddles  over  the  earth  in 
a  carapace,  or  the  unfastidious  worm  who  dines 
on  the  dust  of  his  feet.  Man  is  not  the  pedestalled 
individual  pictured  by  his  imagination — a  being 
glittering  with  prerogatives,  and  towering  apart 
from  and  above  all  other  beings.  He  is  a  pain- 
shunning,  pleasure-seeking,  death-dreading  organ- 
ism, differing  in  particulars,  but  not  in  kind,  from 
the  pain-shunning,  pleasure-seeking,  death-dread- 
ing organisms  below  and  around  him.  Man  is 
neither  a  rock,  a  vegetable,  nor  a  deity.  He 
belongs  to  the  same  class  of  existences,  and  has 
been  brought  into  existence  by  the  same  evolu- 
tional processes,  as  the  horse,  the  toad  that  hops 
in  his  garden,  the  firefly  that  lights  its  twilight 
torch,  and  the  bivalve  that  reluctantly  feeds  him. 

Man's  body  is  composed  fundamentally  of  the 
same  materials  as  the  bodies  of  all  other  animals. 
The  bodies  of  all  animals  are  composed  of  clay. 
They  are  formed  of  the  same  elements  as  those 
that  murmur  in  the  waters,  gallop  in  the  winds, 
and  constitute  the  substance  of  the  insensate  rocks 
and  soils.  More  than  two-thirds  of  the  weight  of 
the  human  body  is  made  up  of  oxygen  alone,  a 
gas  which  forms  one-fifth  of  the  weight  of  the  air, 
more  than  eight-ninths  of  that  of  the  sea,  and 
forty-seven  per  cent,  of  the  superficial  solids  of 
the  earth. 

Man's  body  is  composed  of  cells.     So  are  the 


6  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

bodies  of  all  other  animals.  And  the  cells  in 
the  body  of  a  human  being  are  not  essentially 
different  in  composition  or  structure  from  the  cells 
in  the  body  of  the  sponge.  All  cells  are  composed 
primarily  of  protoplasm,  a  compound  of  carbon, 
hydrogen,  nitrogen,  and  oxygen.  Like  all  other 
animals,  man  is  incapable  of  producing  a  particle 
of  the  essential  substance  of  which  his  body  is 
made.  No  animal  can  produce  protoplasm.  This 
is  a  power  of  the  plant,  and  the  plant  only.  All 
that  any  animal  can  do  is  to  burn  the  compounds 
formed  in  the  sun-lit  laboratories  of  the  vegetable 
world.  The  human  skeleton,  like  the  skeletons  of 
nearly  all  other  animals,  is  composed  chiefly  of 
lime — lime  being,  in  the  sea,  where  life  spent  so 
many  of  its  earlier  centuries,  the  most  available 
material  for  parts  whose  purpose  it  is  to  furnish 
shape  and  durability  to  the  organism.  Man  grows 
from  an  egg.  So  do  all  creatures  of  clay.  Every 
animal  commences  at  the  same  place — in  a  single, 
lowly,  almost  homogeneous  cell.  A  dog,  a  frog, 
a  philosopher,  and  a  worm  cannot  for  a  long 
time  after  their  embryonic  commencement  be 
distinguished  from  each  other.  Like  the  oyster, 
the  ox,  the  insect,  and  the  fish,  like  all  that  live, 
move,  and  breathe,  man  is  mortal.  He  increases 
in  size  and  complexity  through  an  allotted  period 
of  time;  then,  like  all  his  kindred,  wilts  back  into 
the  indistinguishable  flux  from  which  he  came. 
Man  inhales  oxygen  and  exhales  carbon  dioxide. 
So  does  every  animal  that  breathes,  whether  it 
breathe  by  lungs,  gills,  skin,  or  ectosarc,  and 


MAN  AN  ANIMAL  7 

whether  it  breathe  the  sunless  ooze  of  the  sea 
floor  or  the  ethereal  blue  of  the  sky.  Animals 
inhale  oxygen  because  they  eat  carbon  and 
hydrogen.  The  energy  of  all  animals  is  produced 
mainly  by  the  union  of  oxygen  with  the  elements 
of  carbon  and  hydrogen  in  the  tissues  of  animal 
bodies,  the  plentiful  and  ardent  oxygen  being  the 
most  available  supporter  of  the  combustion  of 
these  two  elements. 

Man  is,  then,  an  animal,  more  highly  evolved 
than  the  most  of  his  fellow-beings,  but  positively 
of  the  same  clay,  and  of  the  same  fundamental 
make-up,  with  the  same  eagerness  to  exceed  and 
the  same  destiny,  as  his  less  pompous  kindred 
who  float  and  frolic  and  pass  away  in  the  seas  and 
atmospheres,  and  creep  over  the  land-patches  of  a 
common  clod. 

II.  Man  a  Vertebrate. 

Man  is  a  vertebrate  animal.*  He  has  (anatomi- 
cally at  least)  a  backbone.  He  belongs  to  that 
substantial  class  of  organisms  possessing  an 
articulating  internal  skeleton — the  family  of  the 
fishes,  amphibians,  reptiles,  birds,  and  mammals. 
Most  animals  have  some  sort  of  skeleton,  some 
sort  of  calcareous  contrivance,  whose  business  it 
is  to-  give  form  and  protection  to  the  softer  parts 
of  the  organism.  Some  animals,  as  the  star- 
fishes, have  plates  of  lime  scattered  throughout 
the  surface  parts  of  the  body ;  others,  as  the  corals 

*  See  '  Classes  of  Animals,'  p.  330. 


8  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

and  sponges,  secrete  plant-like  frames,  upon  and 
among  the  branches  of  which  the  organisms 
reside  ;  and  still  others,  as  the  clams,  crustaceans, 
and  insects,  have  skeletons  consisting  of  a  shell 
or  sheath  on  the  outside  of,  and  more  or  less 
surrounding,  the  softer  substances  of  the  body. 
The  limbs  of  insects  are  tiny  tubes  on  the  inside 
of  which  are  the  miniature  muscles  with  which 
they  perform  their  marvels  of  locomotion.  The 
skeleton  of  vertebrates,  consisting  of  levers,  beams, 
columns,  and  arches,  all  skilfully  joined  together 
and  sunk  deep  within  the  muscular  tissue,  forms  a 
conspicuous  contrast  to  the  rudimentary  frames  of 
other  animals.  The  vertebrate  skeleton  consists 
of  a  hollow  axis,  divided  into  segments  and  ex- 
tending along  the  dorsal  region  of  the  body,  from 
the  ventral  side  of  which  articulate,  by  means  of 
awkwardly-constructed  girdles,  an  anterior  and  a 
posterior  pair  of  limbs.  This  dorsal  axis  ends  in 
front  in  a  peculiar  bulbous  arrangement  called  the 
head,  which  contains,  among  other  valuables,  the 
brain  and  buccal  cavern.  The  thoracic  segments 
of  the  backbone  send  off  pairs  of  flat  bones,  which, 
arching  ventrally,  form  the  chest  for  the  protection 
of  the  heart  and  other  vitals.  The  limbs  (except 
in  fishes)  consist  each  of  a  single  long  bone, 
succeeded  by  two  long  bones,  followed  by  two 
transverse  rows  of  short,  irregular  wrist  or  ankle 
bones,  ending  normally  in  five  branching  series  of 
bones  called  digits.  This  is  essentially  the  skeleton 
of  all  fishes,  amphibians,  reptiles,  birds,  and 
mammals.  In  short,  it  is  the  universal  vertebrate 


MAN  A  VERTEBRATE  9 

type  of  frame.  There  are  minor  modifications  to 
suit  the  various  kinds  of  environment,  adaptations 
to  the  necessities  of  aquatic,  terrestrial,  and  aerial 
locomotion  and  life,  some  parts  being  specialised, 
others  atrophied,  and  still  others  omitted,  but 
there  is  never  anywhere,  from  fishes  to  philoso- 
phers, any  fundamental  departure  from  the  estab- 
lished vertebrate  type  of  skeleton.*  The  pectoral 
fins  of  fishes  correspond  to  the  fore-limbs  of  frogs 
and  reptiles,  the  wings  of  birds,  and  the  arms  of 
men.  The  pelvic  fins  of  fishes  are  homologous 
with  the  hind-limbs  of  frogs,  reptiles,  and  quad- 
rupeds, and  the  legs  of  birds,  apes,  and  men. 
The  foot  of  the  dog  and  crocodile,  the  hand  of  the 
orang,  and  the  flipper  of  the  dolphin  and  seal,  all 
have  the  same  general  structure  as  the  hand  of 
man  ;  and  the  wings  of  the  bat  and  bird,  the  fore- 
limbs  of  the  lizard  and  elephant,  and  the  comical 
shovels  of  the  mole  and  ornithorhynchus,  notwith- 
standing the  great  differences  in  their  external 
appearance  and  use,  contain  essentially  the  same 
bones  and  the  same  arrangement  of  the  bones  as 
do  the  arms  of  men  and  women.  The  human 
body  has  two  primary  cavities  in  it.  So  have  the 
bodies  of  all  vertebrates:  a  neural  cavity  con- 
taining the  brain  and  spinal  cord,  and  a  visceral 
cavity  containing  the  heart,  liver,  lungs,  and 
alimentary  canal.  Invertebrates  have  only  one 

*  Snakes  are  limbless,  and  hind-limbs  are  lacking  in 
whales  and  other  degenerates ;  but  rudimentary  limbs  are 
found  in  the  embryonic  stages  of  these  animals.  Frogs,  it 
may  be  said  also,  have  no  ribs. 


io  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

body  cavity — the  one  corresponding  to  the  visceral 
cavity  of  vertebrates — and  the  main  nerve  trunk, 
instead  of  extending  along  the  back,  as  among 
vertebrates,  is  in  invertebrates  located  ventrally. 
Vertebrates  are  the  only  animals  on  the  earth  that 
have  a  highly  developed  circulatory  system,  a 
system  entirely  shut  off  from  the  other  systems, 
and  containing  a  heart,  arteries,  veins,  and 
capillaries.  In  all  invertebrates  the  digestive  and 
circulatory  systems  remain  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent  connected,  the  blood  and  food  mingling 
more  or  less  in  the  general  cavity  of  the  body. 
Worms  and  insects  have  pulsating  tubes  instead  of 
heart  and  arteries.  Crustaceans  have  hearts  with 
one  chamber,  and  mollusks  have  two  or  three  cham- 
bered hearts,  but  the  blood,  instead  of  returning 
to  the  heart  after  its  journey  through  the  arteries, 
passes  into  the  body  cavity.  In  man  and  other 
vertebrates  the  circulating  current  is  confined 
strictly  to  the  bloodvessels,  no  particle  of  it  ever 
escaping  into  the  general  body  cavity.  The  heart 
of  vertebrates  is  distinguished  from  that  of  inver- 
tebrates by  being  located  ventrally.  The  heart  of 
invertebrates  is  in  the  back.  The  blood  of  verte- 
brates differs  from  that  of  invertebrates  in  contain- 
ing both  red  and  white  corpuscles.  Invertebrates 
have  white  corpuscles  only.  Worms  have  yellow, 
red,  or  bright  green  blood.  The  blood  of  crusta- 
ceans is  bluish,  that  of  mollusks  is  white,  and  that 
of  insects  dusky  or  brown.  The  blood  of  all 
vertebrates,  excepting  amphioxus,  is  red.  All 
backboned  beings,  whether  they  dwell  in  seas  or 


MAN  A  VERTEBRATE  n 

cities,  and  whether  they  build  nests  or  empires, 
have  two  eyes,  two  ears,  nose  and  mouth,  all 
located  in  the  head,  and  always  occupying  the 
same  relative  position  to  each  other.  Inverte- 
brates may  have  their  brains  in  their  abdomen,  as 
do  the  mites ;  h*ar  with  their  legs  or  antennae,  as 
many  insects  do ;  see  with  their  tunics,  like  the 
scallops ;  and  breathe  with  their  skin,  as  do  the 
worms.  The  crayfish  hears  with  its  '  feelers,'  the 
cricket  and  katydid  with  their  fore-legs,  the  grass- 
hopper with  its  abdomen,  the  clam  with  its  '  foot,' 
and  mysis  and  other  low  crustaceans  have  their 
auditory  organs  on  their  tails. 

Man  is,  then,  like  the  fishes,  frogs,  reptiles,  birds, 
and  quadrupeds,  a  vertebrate  animal.  Excepting 
in  his  infancy,  when  he  is  a  quadruped  going  on 
all  fours,  he  uses  his  posterior  limbs  only  for 
locomotion,  and  his  anterior  for  prehension  and 
the  like.  His  spinal  axis  is  erect  instead  of  hori- 
zontal, and  his  tail  is  atrophied.  But  he  possesses 
all  of  the  unmistakable  qualities  of  the  vertebrate 
type  of  structure — a  two-chambered  body  cavity,  a 
highly  developed  and  dorsally  located  nerve  trunk, 
vertebrate  vitals,  a  closed  circulatory  system,  a 
ventral  heart,  red  blood,  a  head  containing  sense 
organs  and  brain,  and  a  well-ordered  internal 
skeleton,  consisting  of  a  vertebral  column  with 
skull  and  ribs  and  two  pairs  of  limbs,  the  limbs 
consisting  each  of  one  long  bone,  two  long  bones, 
two  transverse  rows  of  irregular  bones,  and  five 
branches  at  the  end. 


12  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

III.  Man  a  Mammal. 

Man  is  a  mammal.  He  belongs  to  the  most 
brilliant  and  influential  of  the  five  classes  of  verte- 
brates— the  class  to  which  belong  so  many  of  his 
associates  and  victims,  the  class  to  which  belong 
the  horse,  the  dog,  the  deer,  the  ox,  the  sheep,  the 
swine,  the  squirrel,  the  camel,  the  unattenuated 
elephant,  and  the  timid-hearted  hare.  To  this 
class  belong  also  the  lion,  the  tiger,  the  kangaroo, 
the  beaver,  the  bear,  the  bat,  the  monkey,  the 
mole,  the  wolf,  the  ornithorhynchus,  and  the 
whale — in  short,  all  animals  that  have  hair.  Fishes 
and  reptiles  have  scales ;  birds  have  feathers ;  all 
mammals  are  covered  to  a  greater  or  less  extent 
with  hair.  The  aquatic  habits  of  whales  render 
hair  of  no  use  to  them.  Hence,  while  the  unborn 
of  these  animals  still  cling  to  the  structural  tradi- 
tions of  their  ancestors  and  are  covered  with  hair, 
the  adults  are  almost  hairless.  The  sartorial 
habits  of  human  beings  and  the  selective  influ- 
ences of  the  sexes  have  had  a  similar  effect  on  the 
hairy  covering  of  the  human  body.  Hair  exists 
all  over  the  human  body  surface,  excepting  on  the 
soles  of  the  hands  and  feet,  but  in  a  greatly 
dwarfed  condition.  It  is  only  on  the  scalp  and 
on  the  faces  of  males,  where  it  is  scientifically 
assisted  for  purposes  of  display,  that  it  grows 
luxuriantly.  It  is  by  no  means  certain  that  even 
the  hair  on  the  masculine  scalp  will  last  forever. 
For  if  the  hermetical  derby  and  other  deadly 
devices  worn  bv  men  continue  their  devastations 


MAN  A  MAMMAL  13 

as  they  have  in  the  past,  we  may  expect  to  have, 
in  the  course  of  generations,  men  with  foreheads 
reaching  regularly  to  the  occiput.  Most  animals 
lay  eggs.  Man  does  not.  Like  the  dog,  the 
horse,  the  squirrel,  and  the  bat,  man  is  viviparous, 
the  eggs  hatching  within  the  parental  body. 
Human  young  are  born  helpless,  and  are  sus- 
tained during  the  period  of  their  infancy  by  the 
secretions  of  the  milk  glands.  So  are  all  the  sons 
and  daughters  of  mammals.  Whether  they  come 
into  the  world  among  the  waters  or  among  the 
desert  sands,  in  the  hollow  of  a  tree,  in  a  hole  in 
the  earth,  or  in  a  palace,  the  children  of  mammals 
are  frail  and  pitiful,  and  they  survive  to  grow  and 
multiply  only  because  they  are  the  object  of  the 
loving  and  incessant  sacrifices  of  a  mother. 

Mammals  are  distinguished  from  all  other 
animals  by  the  possession  of  two  kinds  of  skin 
glands — the  sweat  glands  and  the  oil  glands— and 
by  the  development  of  certain  of  these  glands  in 
the  female  into  organs  for  the  nourishing  of  the 
young.  Among  reptiles  and  birds  the  lower  jaw 
is  suspended  from  the  skull  by  a  bone  called  the 
quadrate  bone.  Among  men  and  other  mammals 
the  lower  jaw  is  joined  directly  to  the  skull,  the 
quadrate  bone  becoming,  in  the  vicissitudes  of 
evolution,  the  hammer  (malleus)  of  the  mammalian 
ear.  Man  has  a  four-chambered  heart — two  reser- 
voirs which  receive,  and  two  pumps  which  propel, 
the  scarlet  waters  of  the  body.  Fishes  have  two- 
chambered  hearts;  frogs  and  most  reptiles  have 
three-chambered  hearts;  all  mammals  and  birds 


14  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

have  four-chambered  hearts.  The  red  corpuscles 
in  the  blood  of  fishes,  frogs,  reptiles,  and  birds,  are 
discs,  double-convex,  nucleated,  and  in  shape 
oval  or  triangular.  In  man  and  in  all  other 
mammals  (except  the  archaic  camel)  the  red 
corpuscles  are  double-concave,  non-nucleated,  and 
circular.  Man  has  a  diaphragm  dividing  the  body 
cavity  into  chest  and  abdomen,  and  a  shining 
white  bridge  of  interlacing  fibres,  called  corpus 
callosum,  uniting  his  cerebral  hemispheres.  And 
man  is  a  mammal  because,  like  other  mammals, 
he  has,  in  addition  to  the  qualities  already  men- 
tioned, these  valuable  and  distinct  characteristics. 

IV.  Man  a  Primate. 

Man  is  a  primate.  There  are  four  divisions  in 
the  order  of  primates — lemurs,  monkeys,  apes, 
and  men.  But  the  most  interesting  and  important 
of  these,  according  to  man,  is  man.  Man  is  a 
primate  because,  like  other  primates,  he  has  arms 
and  hands  instead  of  fore-legs.  And  these  are 
important  characteristics.  It  was  a  splendid 
moment  when  the  tendencies  of  evolution, 
pondering  the  possibilities  of  structural  improve- 
ment, decided  to  rear  the  vertebrate  upon  its 
hind-limbs,  and  convert  its  anterior  appendages 
into  instruments  of  manipulation.  So  long  as 
living  creatures  were  able  simply  to  move  through 
the  airs  and  waters  of  the  earth  and  over  the 
surface  of  the  solids,  they  were  powerless  to 
modify  the  universe  about  them  very  much.  But 
the  moment  beings  were  developed  with  parts  of 


MAN  A  PRIMATE  15 

their  bodies  fitted  to  take  hold  of  and  move  and 
fashion  and  compel  the  universe  around  them, 
that  moment  the  life  process  was  endowed  with 
the  power  of  miracles.  With  the  invention  of 
hands  and  arms  commenced  seriously  that  long 
campaign  against  the  tendencies  of  inanimate 
nature  which  finds  its  most  marvellous  achieve- 
ments in  the  sustained  and  triumphant  operations 
of  human  industry.  None  of  the  primates  except- 
ing man  use  their  hind-limbs  as  a  sole  means  of 
changing  their  place  in  the  universe,  but  in  all  of 
them  the  fore-limbs  are  regularly  used  as  organs 
of  manipulation.  Man  is  a  primate  because  his 
fingers  and  toes,  like  those  of  other  primates 
(except  the  tiny  marmosets  of  Brazil),  end  in 
nails.  Man  has  neither  claws  to  burrow  into  the 
earth,  talons  with  which  to  hold  and  rend  his 
victims,  nor  hoofs  to  put  thunder  into  his  move- 
ments. The  human  stomach,  like  that  of  all  the 
other  primates,  is  a  bagpipe.  The  stomach  of  the 
carnivora  is  usually  a  simple  sack,  while  rodents 
have,  as  a  rule,  two  stomachs,  and  ruminants 
four.  Man  is  a  primate  because  his  milk  glands 
are  located  on  the  breast  and  are  two  in  number. 
The  mammary  glands  vary  in  number  in  the 
different  orders  of  mammals,  from  two  in  the 
horse  and  whale  to  twenty-two  in  some  insec- 
tivora.  Most  ruminating  animals  have  four,  swine 
ten,  and  carnivora  generally  six  or  eight.  These 
glands  may  be  located  in  the  region  of  the  groin, 
as  in  the  horse  and  whale ;  between  the  fore- 
limbs,  as  in  the  elephant  and  bat ;  or  arranged  in 


16  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

pairs  extending  from  the  fore  to  the  hind  limbs* 
as  in  the  carnivora  and  swine.  In  man  and  all 
other  primates  (except  lemurs)  the  mammary 
glands  are  pectoral  and  two  in  number.  All 
primates,  including  man,  have  also  a  disc-shaped 
placenta.  The  placenta  is  the  organ  of  nutrition 
in  mammalian  embryos.  It  is  found  in  all  young- 
bearing  animals  above  the  marsupials,  and  con- 
sists of  a  mass  of  glands  between  the  embryo  and 
the  parental  body.  In  some  animals  it  entirely 
surrounds  and  encloses  the  embryo ;  in  others  it 
assumes  the  form  of  a  girdle  ;  and  in  still  others 
it  is  bell- shaped.  The  primates  are  the  only 
animals  in  which  this  peculiar  organ  is  in  the 
shape  of  a  simple  disc.* 

The  nearest  relatives  by  blood  man  has  in  this 
world  are  the  exceedingly  man-like  apes — the 
tailless  anthropoids — the  gorillas  and  chimpanzees 
of  Africa,  and  the  orangs  and  gibbons  of  southern 
and  insular  Asia.  The  fact  that  man  is  an  actual 
relative  and  descendant  of  the  ape  is  one  of  the 
most  disagreeable  of  the  many  distasteful  truths 
which  the  human  mind  in  its  evolution  has  come 
upon.  To  a  vanity  puffed,  as  is  that  of  human 
beings,  to  the  splitting,  the  consanguinity  of  gorilla 
and  gentleman  seems  horrible.  Man  prefers 
to  have  arrived  on  the  earth  by  way  of  a  ladder 
let  down  by  his  imagination  from  the  celestial 
concave.  Within  his  own  memory  man  has  been 

*  The  bat  and  a  few  other  animals  have  a  disc-like 
placenta,  but  it  develops  into  the  disc  shape  by  a  different 
route  from  what  it  does  in  the  primates. 


MAN  A  PRIMATE  17 

guilty  of  many  foolish  and  disgraceful  things. 
But  this  attempt  by  him  to  repudiate  his  ancestors 
by  surreptitiously  fabricating  for  himself  an  origin 
different  from,  and  more  glorious  than,  the  rest  is 
one  of  the  most  absurd  and  scandalous  in  the 
whole  list.  It  is  a  shallow  logic — the  logic  of 
those  who,  without  worth  of  their  own,  try  to 
shine  with  a  false  and  stolen  lustre.  No  more 
masterly  rebuke  was  ever  administered  to  those  in 
the  habit  of  sneering  at  the  truth  in  this  matter 
than  the  caustic  reply  of  Huxley  to  the  taunt  of 
the  fat-witted  Bishop — that  he  would  rather  be 
the  descendant  of  a  respectable  ape  than  the 
descendant  of  one  who  not  only  closed  his  eyes 
to  the  facts  around  him,  but  used  his  official 
position  to  persuade  others  to  do  likewise.  Man's 
reluctance  to  take  his  anatomical  place  beside  his 
simian  kinspeople  has  been  exceeded  only  by  his 
selfish  and  high-handed  determination  to  exclude 
all  other  terrestrial  beings  from  his  heaven. 

Man  is  a  talkative  and  religious  ape.  He  is  an 
ape,  but  with  a  much  greater  amount  of  enterprise 
and  with  a  greater  likelihood  of  being  found  in 
every  variety  of  climate.  Like  the  anthropoid, 
man  has  a  bald  face  and  an  obsolete  tail.  But  he 
is  distinguished  from  his  arboreal  relative  by  his 
arrogant  bearing,  his  skilled  larynx,  and  especially 
by  the  satisfaction  he  experiences  in  the  con- 
templation of  the  image  which  appears  when  he 
looks  in  a  mirror. 

The  man-like  apes  are  from  three  to  six  feet  tall, 
and  are  all  of  them  very  strong,  the  gorilla,  who 

2 


i8  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

sometimes  weighs  over  three  hundred  pounds, 
being  about  the  bravest  and  most  formidable  un- 
armed animal  on  the  planet.  They  are  erect  or 
semi-erect,  have  loud  voices,  plantigrade  feet,  and 
irritable  dispositions — in  all  of  these  particulars 
being  strikingly  like  men.  The  gorilla,  chim- 
panzee, and  gibbon  are  highlanders,  preferring 
the  uplands  and  mountains.  The  orang  is  a  low- 
lander,  living  phlegmatically  among  the  sylvan 
swamps  of  Sumatra  and  Borneo.  The  gorilla 
and  chimpanzee  are  terrestrial,  seldom  going 
among  the  trees  except  to  s^et  food  or  to  sleep. 
The  orang  and  gibbon  are)  arboreal,  seldom 
coming  to  the  ground  except  to  drink  or  bathe. 
They  all  walk  on  their  hind-limbs,  generally  in  a 
stooping  posturer^vlth  their  knuckles  or  fingers 
touching  the  ground.  But  they  sometimes  walk 
with  their  arms  hanging  down  by  their  sides, 
and  sometimes  with  their  hands  clasped  back  of 
their  heads  to  give  them  balance.  None  of  them 
ever  place  their  palms  on  the  ground  when  they 
walk — that  is,  none  of  them  walk  on  four  feet. 
The  anthropoid  races,  in  the  shape  of  their  heads 
and  faces  and  in  the  general  form  and  structure 
of  their  bodies,  and  even  in  their  habits  of  life, 
resemble  in  a  remarkable  manner  the  lowest  races 
of  human  beings.  This  resemblance  is  recognised 
by  the  negro  races,  who  call  the  gorilla  and  chim- 
panzee '  hairy  men,'  and  believe  them  to  be  de- 
scendants of  outcast  members  of  their  own  species. 
There  are  differences  in  structure  between  man 
and  the  apes,  just  as  there  are  differences  in 


MAN  A  PRIMATE  19 

structure  between  the  Caucasian  and  the  Caffre, 
or  even  between  individual  Caucasians  or  individual 
Caffres.  There  are  differences  in  structure  and 
topography,  often  very  noticeable  differences,  even 
among  members  of  the  same  family.  But  in  all 
of  its  essential  characters,  and  extending  often  to 
astonishing  particulars,  the  structure  of  man  is 
identical  with  that  of  the  anthropoid  (i).* 

In  external  appearances  the  man-like  races  differ 
from  men  in  having  a  luxuriant  covering  of  natural 
hair.  But  anthropoids  differ  very  much  among 
themselves  in  this  particular.  The  orang,  usually 
covered  with  long  hair,  is  sometimes  almost  hair- 
less. There  are,  too,  races  of  human  beings 
whose  bodies  are  covered  with  a  considerable 
growth  of  hair.  The  Todas  (Australians)  and 
Ainus  (aborigines  of  Japan)  are  noted  for  the 
hairiness  of  their  bodies,  certain  individuals  among 
them  being  covered  with  a  real  fur,  especially  on 
the  lower  limbs  (2). 

Individuals  also  often  appear  in  every  race  with 
a  remarkable  development  of  the  hair.  Adrian 
and  his  son  Fedor,  exhibited  years  ago  over 
Europe  as  '  dog-men,'  are  examples.  The  father 
was  completely  covered  with  a  thick  growth  of  fine 
dirty-yellow  hair  two  or  three  inches  long.  Long 
tufts  grew  out  of  his  nostrils  and  ears,  giving  him 
a  striking  resemblance  to  a  Skye  terrier.  Fedor, 
and  also  his  sister,  were  covered  with  hair  like  the 

*  Figures  in  parentheses  (  )  at  the  close  of  borrowed  ideas 
refer  to  book  numbers  in  the  bibliography  at  the  close  of  the 
chapter. 

2 — 2 


20  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

Father,  but  another  son  was  like  ordinary  men. 
The  man-like  races  have  also  longer  arms  in  pro- 
portion to  the  height  of  the  body  than  man  gene- 
rally has.  But  this  is  also  true  of  human  infants 
and  negroes.  The  gibbon  has  relatively  much 
longer  arms  than  the  other  anthropoids.  It 
differs  from  the  chimpanzee  in  this  respect  more 
than  the  chimpanzee  differs  from  man.  When 
standing  upright  and  reaching  down  with  the 
middle  finger,  the  gibbon  can  touch  its  foot,  while 
the  chimpanzee  can  reach  only  to  the  knee.  Man 
ordinarily  reaches  part  way  down  the  thigh,  but 
negroes  have  been  known  to  have  arms  reaching 
to  the  knee-pan  (3). 

The  skeleton  of  the  African  races  contains  many 
characters  recognised  by  osteologists  as  '  pithe- 
coid,' or  ape-like.  It  is  massive,  the  flat  bones  are 
thick,  and  the  pelvis  narrow.  In  the  manlike  apes 
the  large  toe  is  opposable  to  the  other  four,  and 
is  used  by  them  much  as  the  thumb  is  used.  But 
this  difference  between  the  two  races  of  beings  is 
just  what  might  be  expected  from  the  differences 
in  their  modes  of  life.  Man  has  little  need  of  this 
opposability  on  account  of  his  exclusively  terrestrial 
life,  while  to  the  ape  it  is  indispensable  on  account 
of  his  arboreal  environment  and  life.  '  But  there 
are,'  says  Haeckel, '  wild  tribes  of  men  who  can 
oppose  the  large  toe  to  the  other  four  just  as  if  it 
were  a  thumb,  and  even  new-born  infants  of  the 
most  highly-developed  races  of  men  can  grasp  as 
easily  with  their  hind-hands  as  with  their  fore- 
hands. Chinese  boatmen  row  with  their  feet, 


MAN  A  PRIMATE  21 

and  Bengal  workmen  weave  with  them.  The 
negro,  in  whom  the  big  toe  is  freely  movable, 
seizes  hold  of  the  branches  of  trees  with  it  when 
climbing,  just  like  the  four-handed  apes '  (4). 

Many  men  have  lost  their  arms  by  accident 
and  have  learned  to  use  their  feet  as  hands  with 
wonderful  skill.  Not  many  years  ago  there  died 
in  Europe  an  armless  violinist  who  had  during 
his  lifetime  played  to  cultured  audiences  in  most 
of  the  capitals  of  the  world.  Some  of  the  most 
accomplished  of  penmen  hold  their  pen  between 
their  toes.  The  man-like  apes  live  to  about  the 
same  age  as  man,  and  all  of  them,  like  man,  have 
beards.  The  anthropoid  beard,  too,  like  the 
human,  appears  at  the  age  of  sexual  maturity. 
The  human  beard  often  differs  in  colour  from  the 
hair  of  the  scalp,  and  whenever  it  does  it  has 
been  observed  to  be  invariably  lighter — never 
darker — than  the  hair  on  the  scalp.  This  is  true 
among  all  races  of  men.  The  same  rule  and  the 
same  uniformity  exists  among  anthropoids.  The 
races  of  mankind  are  divided  into  two  primary 
groups  depending  upon  the  shape  of  the  head  and 
the  character  of  the  hair :  the  short-headed  races 
(Brachycephali),  such  as  the  Malays,  Mongols,  and 
Aryans,  with  round  or  oval  faces,  straight  hair, 
and  vertical  profiles ;  and  the  long-headed  races 
(Dolichocephali),  with  woolly  hair  and  progna- 
thous faces,  such  as  the  Papuans  and  Africa 
races.  The  skin  of  the  short-headed  races  is 
orange  or  white,  while  the  skin  and  hair  of  the 
long-headed  races  are  glossy  black. 


22  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

It  is,  at  least,  interesting  that  the  orang  and 
gibbon,  who  live  in  Asia  and  its  islands,  where 
the  brachycephalic  races  of  men  supposedly  arose, 
are  themselves  brachycephalic  ;  and  that  the 
gorilla  and  chimpanzee,  who  live  in  Africa,  where 
the  dolichocephalic  races  chiefly  live,  are  dolicho- 
cephalic. The  gorilla  and  chimpanzee  also  have, 
like  the  men  and  women  of  Africa,  black  skin  and 
hair;  while  the  hair  of  the  orang  is  a  reddish- 
brown,  and  its  skin  sometimes  yellowish-white. 
The  dentition  of  the  anthropoids  and  men  is  in 
all  essentials  identical.  They  all  have  two  sets  of 
teeth  :  a  set  of  milk-teeth,  twenty  in  number,  and 
thirty-two  permanent  teeth,  the  permanents  con- 
sisting of  two  incisors,  one  canine,  two  premolars, 
and  three  molars,  in  each  half-jaw.  Man  has 
ordinarily  twelve  pairs  of  ribs  and  thirty-two 
vertebrae.  So  has  the  orang.  The  other  anthro- 
poids have  thirteen  pairs  of  ribs.  But  the  number 
of  ribs  in  both  human  and  anthropoid  beings  is 
not  uniform,  man  occasionally  having  thirteen 
pairs,  and  the  gorilla  fourteen.  Man  has  also  the 
same  number  of  caudal  vertebrae  in  his  rudimentary 
tail  as  the  anthropoid  has.  The  hands  and  feet 
of  anthropoids,  bone  for  bone  and  muscle  for 
muscle,  correspond  with  those  of  men,  no  greater 
structural  differences  existing  than  among  different 
species  of  men.  The  human  foot  has  three  muscles 
not  found  in  the  human  hand — a  short  flexor 
muscle,  a  short  extensor  muscle,  and  a  long 
muscle  extending  from  the  fibula  to  the  foot. 
All  of  these  muscles  are  found  in  the  anthropoid 


MAN  A  PRIMATE  23 

foot  just  as  in  the  foot  of  man.  There  are  also 
the  same  differences  between  the  arrangement  of 
the  bones  of  the  anthropoid  wrist  and  ankle  as 
between  the  wrist  and  ankle  bones  of  man.  What- 
ever set  of  anatomical  particulars  may  be  selected, 
whether  it  be  hands,  arms,  feet,  muscles,  skull, 
viscera,  ribs,  or  dentition,  it  is  found  that  the 
anthropoid  races  and  men  are  in  all  essentials  the 
same.  The  differences  are  such  as  have  arisen  as 
a  result  of  different  modes  of  life,  and  such  as 
exist  between  different  tribes  of  either  group  of 
animals. 

'  The  structural  differences  which  separate  man 
from  the  gorilla  and  chimpanzee,'  says  Huxley,  in 
summing  up  the  conclusion  of  his  brilliant  inquiry 
into  '  Man's  Place  in  Nature,'  '  are  not  so  great  as 
those  which  separate  the  gorilla  from  the  lower 
apes.' 

'  The  body  of  man  and  that  of  the  anthropoid 
are  not  only  peculiarly  similar,'  says  Haeckel, 
'but  they  are  practically  one  and  the  same  in 
every  important  respect.  The  same  two  hundred 
bones,  in  the  same  order  and  structure,  make  up 
our  inner  skeleton  ;  the  same  three  hundred 
muscles  effect  our  movements  ;  the  same  hair 
clothes  our  skin  ;  the  same  four-chambered  heart 
is  the  central  pulsometer  in  our  circulation  ;  the 
same  thirty-two  teeth  are  set  in  the  same  order  in 
our  jaws  ;  the  same  salivary,  hepatic,  and  gastric 
glands  compass  our  digestion  ;  the  same  repro- 
ductive organs  insure  the  maintenance  of  our 
race '  (5). 


24  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

*  Not  being  able,'  says  Owen  in  his  paper  on 
'  The  Characters  of  Mammalia,'  '  to  appreciate  or 
conceive  of  the  distinction  between  the  psychical 
phenomena  of  a  chimpanzee  and  of  a  Boschisman 
or  of  an  Aztec  with  arrested  brain-growth,  as 
being  of  a  nature  so  essential  as  to  preclude  a 
comparison  between  them,  or  as  being  other  than 
a  difference  in  degree,  I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to 
the  significance  of  that  all- pervading  similitude  of 
structure — every  tooth,  every  bone,  strictly  homo- 
logous— which  makes  the  determination  of  the 
difference  between  Homo  and  Pithecus  the  anato- 
mist's difficulty.' 

'  If  before  the  appearance  of  man  on  the  earth,' 
says  Ward  in  his  '  Dynamic  Sociology,'  '  an 
imaginary  painter  had  visited  it,  and  drawn  a 
portrait  embodying  the  thorax  of  the  gibbon,  the 
hands  and  feet  of  the  gorilla,  the  form  and  skull 
of  the  chimpanzee,  the  brain  development  of  the 
orang,  and  the  countenance  of  Semnopithectis,  giving 
to  the  whole  the  average  stature  of  all  of  these  apes, 
the  result  would  have  been  a  being  not  far  removed 
from  our  conception  of  the  primitive  man,  and  not 
widely  different  from  the  actual  condition  of 
certain  low  tribes  of  savages.  The  brain  develop- 
ment would  perhaps  be  too  low  for  the  average 
of  any  existing  tribe,  and  would  correspond  better 
with  that  of  certain  microcephalous  idiots  and 
cretins,  of  which  the  human  race  furnishes  many 
examples.' 

And  it  is  not  true,  as  is  commonly  supposed, 
that,  after  all  other  resemblances  between  the 


MAN  A  PRIMATE  25 

human  and  anthropoid  structures  have  been  made 
out,  there  still  exists  somewhere  some  undistin- 
guishable  difference  in  the  organic  structure  of  their 
brains.  All  differences  in  structure  from  time  to 
time  suspected  or  asserted  to  exist  between  the 
brain  of  man  and  that  of  the  man-like  apes  have 
been  one  after  another  completely  swept  away. 
And  it  is  now  known  to  all  neurologists  that  the 
human  and  anthropoid  brains  differ  structurally  in 
no  particulars  whatever,  both  of  them  containing 
the  same  lobes,  the  same  ventricles  and  cornua, 
and  the  same  convolutional  outline.  Even  the 
posterior  lobe,  the  posterior  cornu,  and  the  hippo- 
campus minor,  so  long  triumphantly  asserted  to 
be  characteristic  features  of  the  human  brain,  have 
been  pitilessly  identified  in  all  anthropoids  by  the 
profound  and  terrible  Huxley.  There  is  not  an 
important  fold  or  fissure  in  the  brain  of  man  that 
is  not  found  in  the  brain  of  the  anthropoid.  'The 
surface  of  the  brain  of  a  monkey,'  says  Huxley, 
'  exhibits  a  sort  of  skeleton  map  of  man's,  and  in 
the  man-like  apes  the  details  become  more  and 
more  filled  in,  until  it  is  only  in  minor  characters 
that  the  chimpanzee's  or  the  orang's  brain  can  be 
structurally  distinguished  from  man's  '  (6). 

The  great  difference  physically  between  man 
and  the  anthropoids,  aside  from  man's  talenled 
larynx  and  erect  posture,  lies  in  man's  abnormal 
cranial  capacity.  The  normal  human  cranium 
never  contains  less  than  55  cubic  inches  of  space, 
while  the  largest  gorilla  cranium  contains  onl^ 
cubic  inches.  This  is  a  difference  of  ao  cubic 


26  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

inches.  And  20^  cubic  inches  of  thinking  matter 
is  an  alarming  amount  to  be  lacking  in  a  single 
individual.  But  this  cranial  gap  between  gorilla 
and  man  is  deprived  of  some  of  its  significance  by 
the  fact  that  human  crania  sometimes  measure 
114  cubic  inches,  making  a  difference  between  the 
smallest  and  largest  human  brains  of  59  cubic 
inches.  The  difference  between  the  gorilla  and 
the  savage  in  cranial  capacity  is,  therefore,  only 
about  one-third  as  great  as  the  cranial  chasm  between 
the  savage  and  the  sage. 

V.  Recapitulation. 

The  anatomical  gulf  between  men  and  apes  does 
not  exist.  There  are,  in  fact,  no  gulfs  anywhere, 
only  gradations.  All  chasms  are  completely 
covered  by  unmistakable  affinities,  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  remains  of  so  many  millions  of 
deceased  races  lie  hidden  beneath  seas  or  ever- 
lastingly locked  in  the  limy  bosoms  of  the  conti- 
nents. There  are  closer  kinships  and  remoter 
kinships,  but  there  are  kinships  everywhere.  The 
more  intimate  kinships  are  indicated  by  more 
definite  and  detailed  similarities,  and  the  more 
general  relationships  by  more  fundamental  resem- 
blances. All  creatures  are  bound  to  all  other 
creatures  by  the  ties  of  a  varying  but  undeniable 
consanguinity. 

Man  stands  unquestionably  in  the  primate  order 
of  animals,  because  he  has  certain  qualities  of 
structure  which  all  primates  have,  and  which  all 
other  animals  have  not :  hands  and  arms  and 


RECAPITULATION  27 

nails,  a  bagpipe  stomach,  great  subordination  of 
the  cerebellum,  a  disc-like  placenta,  teeth  dif- 
ferentiated into  incisors,  canines,  and  molars,  and 
pectoral  milk  glands. 

Man  is  more  closely  akin  to  the  anthropoid  apes 
than  to  the  other  primates  on  account  of  his 
immense  brain,  his  ape-like  face,  his  vertical  spine, 
and  in  being  a  true  two-handed  biped.  The  man- 
like apes  and  men  have  the  same  number  and 
kinds  of  teeth,  the  same  limb  bones  and  muscles, 
like  ribs  and  vertebrae,  an  atrophied  tail,  the  same 
brain  structure,  and  a  suspicious  similarity  in  looks 
and  disposition.  Men  and  anthropoids  live  about 
the  same  number  of  years,  both  being  toothless 
and  wrinkled  in  old  age.  The  beard,  too,  in  both 
classes  of  animals  appears  at  the  same  period  of 
life  and  obeys  the  same  law  of  variation  in  colour. 
Even  the  hairs  on  different  parts  of  the  bodies  of 
men  and  anthropoids,  as  on  the  arms,  incline  at  a 
like  angle  to  the  body  surface.  The  hair  on  the 
upper  arm  and  that  on  the  forearm,  in  both  anthro- 
poids and  men,  point  in  opposite  directions — 
toward  the  elbow.  This  peculiarity  is  found  no- 
where in  the  animal  kingdom  excepting  in  a  few 
American  monkeys. 

Man's  mammalian  affinities  are  shown  in  his 
diaphragm,  his  hair,  his  four-chambered  heart,  his 
corpus  callosum,  his  non-nucleated  blood-corpuscles, 
and  his  awkward  incubation. 

The  fishes,  frogs,  reptiles,  birds,  and  non-human 
mammals  are  human  in  having  two  body  cavities, 
segmented  internal  skeletons,  two  pairs  of  limbs, 


28  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

skulls  and  spinal  columns,  red  blood,  brains,  and 
dorsal  cords ;  and  in  possessing  two  eyes,  two  ears, 
nostrils,  and  mouth  opening  out  of  the  head. 

And  finally  all  animals,  including  man,  are 
related  to  all  other  animal  forms  by  the  great 
underlying  facts  of  their  origin,  structure,  com- 
position, and  destiny.  All  creatures,  whether  they 
live  in  the  sea,  in  the  heavens,  or  in  subterranean 
glooms ;  whether  they  swim,  fly,  crawl,  or  walk ; 
whether  their  world  is  a  planet  or  a  water-drop ; 
and  whether  they  realise  it  or  not,  commence  exist- 
ence in  the  same  way,  are  composed  of  the  same 
substances,  are  nourished  by  the  same  matters, 
follow  fundamentally  the  same  occupations,  all  do 
under  the  circumstances  the  best  they  can,  and  all 
arrive  ultimately  at  the  same  pitiful  end. 

VI.  The  Meaning  of  Homology. 

The  similarities  and  homologies  of  structure 
existing  between  man  and  other  animals,  and  be- 
tween other  animals  and  still  others,  are  not  acci- 
dental and  causeless.  They  are  not  resemblances 
scattered  arbitrarily  among  the  multitudinous 
forms  of  life  by  the  capricious  levities  of  chance. 
That  all  animals  commence  existence  as  an  egg 
and  are  all  made  up  of  cells  composed  of  the 
same  protoplasmic  substance,  and  all  inhale  oxygen 
and  exhale  carbon  dioxide,  and  are  all  seeking 
pleasure  and  seeking  to  avoid  pain,  are  more  than 
ordinary  facts.  They  are  filled  with  inferences. 
That  vertebrate  animals,  differing  in  externals  as 
widely  as  herring  and  Englishmen,  are  ail  built 


THE  MEANING  OF  HOMOLOGY      29 

according  to  the  same  fundamental  plan,  with 
marrow-filled  backbones  and  exactly  two  pairs  of 
limbs  branching  in  the  same  way,  is  an  astonishing 
coincidence.  That  the  wing  of  the  bird,  the  fore- 
leg of  the  dog,  the  flipper  of  the  whale,  and  the 
fore-limb  of  the  toad  and  crocodile,  have  essentially 
the  same  bones  as  the  human  arm  has  is  a  fact 
which  may  be  without  significance  to  blind  men, 
but  to  no  one  else.  The  metamorphosis  of  the 
frog  from  a  fish,  of  the  insect  from  a  worm,  and  of 
a  poet  from  a  senseless  cell,  are  transformations 
simply  marvellous  in  meaning.  And  it  is  not 
easy,  since  Darwin,  to  understand  how  such  lessons 
could  remain  long  unintelligible,  even  to  stones 
and  simpletons.  Not  many  generations  have 
passed,  however,  since  these  revelations,  now  so 
distinct  and  wonderful,  fell  on  the  listless  minds 
of  men  as  ineffectually  as  the  glories  of  the  flower 
fall  on  the  sightless  sockets  of  the  blind. 

It  is  hardly  two  generations  since  the  highest 
intelligences  on  the  earth  conceived  that  not 
only  the  different  varieties  of  men — the  black,  the 
white,  and  the  orange — but  all  the  orders  and 
genera  of  the  animal  world,  and  not  only  animals, 
but  plants,  had  all  been  somehow  simultaneously 
and  arbitrarily  brought  into  existence  in  some 
indistinct  antiquity,  and  that  they  had  from  the 
beginning  all  existed  with  practically  the  same 
features  and  in  approximately  the  same  conditions 
as  those  with  which  and  in  which  they  are  found 
to-day.  The  universe  was  conceived  to  be  a  fixed 
and  stupid  something,  born  as  we  see  it,  incapable 


30  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

of  growth,  and  indulging  in  nothing  but  repetitions. 
There  were  no  necessary  coherencies  and  con- 
sanguinities, no  cosmical  tendencies  operating 
eternally  and  universally.  All  was  whimsical  and 
arbitrary.  It  was  not  known  that  anything  had 
grown  or  evolved.  All  things  were  believed  to 
have  been  given  beginning  and  assigned  to  their 
respective  places  in  the  universe  by  a  potential  and 
all-clever  creator.  The  serpent  was  limbless 
because  it  had  officiously  allowed  Eve  to  include 
in  her  dietary  that  which  had  been  expressly  for- 
bidden. The  quadruped  walked  with  its  face 
towards  the  earth  as  a  structural  reminder  of  its 
subjection  to  the  biped,  who  was  supposed  to  be 
especially  skilled  in  keeping  his  eyes  rolled  heaven- 
ward. The  flowers  flung  out  their  colours,  not 
for  the  benefit  of  the  bugs  and  bees,  and  the  stars 
paraded,  not  because  they  were  moved  to  do  so  by 
their  own  eternal  urgings,  but  because  man  had 
eyes  capable  of  being  affected  by  them.  Man  was 
an  erect  and  featherless  vertebrate  because  his 
hypothetical  maker  was  erect  and  featherless.  (I 
wonder  whether,  if  a  clam  should  conceive  a 
creator,  it  would  have  the  magnanimity  to  make 
him  an  insect  or  a  vertebrate,  or  anything  other 
than  a  great  big  clam.) 

VII.  The  Earth  an  Evolution. 

The  world  now  knows — at  least,  the  scientific 
part  of  it  knows — that  these  things  are  not  true, 
that  they  are  but  the  solemn  fancies  of  honest  but 
simple-minded  ancients  who  did  the  best  they 


THE  EARTH  AN  EVOLUTION        31 

could  in  that  twilight  age  to  explain  to  their 
inquiring  instincts  the  wilderness  of  phenomena 
in  which  they  found  themselves.  The  universe  is 
a  process.  It  is  not  petrified,  but  flowing.  It  is 
going  somewhere.  Everything  is  changing  and 
evolving,  and  will  always  continue  to  do  so.  The 
forms  of  life,  of  continents  and  oceans,  and  oi 
streams  and  systems,  which  we  perceive  as  we 
open  our  senses  upon  the  world  to-day,  are  not 
the  forms  that  have  always  existed,  and  they  are 
not  the  forms  of  the  eternal  future.  There  was  a 
time,  away  in  the  inconceivable,  when  there  was 
no  life  upon  the  earth,  no  solids,  and  no  seas. 
The  world  was  an  incandescent  lump,  lifeless  and 
alone,  in  the  cold  solitudes  of  the  spaces.  There 
was  a  time — there  must  have  been  a  time — when 
life  appeared  for  the  first  time  upon  the  earth, 
simple  cellules  without  bones  or  blood,  and  without 
a  suspicion  of  their  immense  and  quarrelsome 
posterity.  There  was  a  time  when  North  America 
was  an  island,  and  the  Alleghany  Mountains  were 
the  only  mountains  of  the  continent.  The  time 
was — in  the  coal-forming  age — when  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley,  from  the  Colorado  Islands  to  the  Alle- 
ghanies,  was  a  vast  marsh  or  sea,  choked  with 
forests  of  equisetum  and  fern,  and  swarming  with 
gigantic  reptiles  now  extinct.  There  was  a  time 
when  palms  grew  in  Dakota,  and  magnolias  waved 
in  the  semi-tropical  climate  of  Greenland  and 
Spitsbergen.  There  was  a  time  when  there  were 
no  Rocky  Mountains  in  existence,  no  Andes,  no 
Alps,  no  Pyrenees,  and  no  Himalayas.  And  that 


32  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

time,  compared  with  the  vast  stretches  of  geo- 
logical duration,  was  not  so  very  long  ago,  for 
these  mountains  are  all  young  mountains.  The 
time  was  when  Jurassic  saurians — those  repulsive 
ruffians  of  that  rude  old  time — represented  the 
highest  intelligence  and  civilisation  of  the  known 
universe.  There  were  no  men  and  women  in  the 
world,  not  even  savages,  when  our  ape-like  fore- 
fathers wandered  and  wondered  through  the  awe- 
some silences  of  primeval  wilds ;  there  were  no 
railroads,  steamboats,  telegraphs,  telephones,  type- 
writers, harvesters,  electric  lights,  nor  sewing 
machines ;  no  billionaires  nor  bicycles,  no  social- 
ists nor  steam-heat,  no  'watered  stock'  nor 
'government  by  injunction,'  no  women's  clubs, 
captains  of  industry,  labour  unions,  nor  'yellow 
perils' — there  was  none  of  these  things  on  the 
earth  a  hundred  years  ago.  All  things  have 
evolved  to  be  what  they  are — the  continents, 
oceans,  and  atmospheres,  and  the  plants  and 
populations  that  live  in  and  upon  them. 

There  will  come  a  time,  too,  looking  forward 
into  the  future,  when  what  we  see  now  will  be 
seen  no  more.  As  we  go  backward  into  the  past, 
the  earth  in  all  of  its  aspects  rapidly  changes; 
the  continents  dwindle,  the  mountains  melt,  and 
existing  races  and  species  disappear  one  after 
another.  The  farther  we  penetrate  into  the  past, 
the  stranger  and  the  more  different  from  the 
present  does  everything  become,  until  finally  we 
come  to  a  world  of  molten  rocks  and  vapourised 
seas  without  a  creeping  thing  upon  it.  As  it  has 


THE  EARTH  AN  EVOLUTION        33 

been  in  the  past  so  will  it  be  in  time  to  come. 
The  present  is  not  everlasting.  The  minds  that 
perceive  upon  this  planet  a  thousand  centuries  in 
the  future  will  perceive  a  very  different  world  from 
that  which  the  minds  of  this  day  perceive — 
different  arts,  animals,  events,  ideals,  geographies, 
sciences,  and  civilisations.  The  earth  seems  fixed 
and  changeless  because  we  are  so  fleeting.  We 
see  it  but  a  moment,  and  are  gone.  The  tossing 
forest  in  the  wrath  of  the  storm  is  motionless 
when  looked  at  by  a  flash  of  lightning.  The  same 
tendencies  that  have  worked  past  changes  are  at 
work  to-day  as  tirelessly  as  in  the  past.  By 
invisible  chisels  the  mountains  are  being  sculp- 
tured, ocean  floors  are  lifting,  and  continents  are 
sinking  into  the  seas.  Species,  systems,  and 
civilisations  are  changing,  some  crumbling  and 
passing  away,  others  rising  out  of  the  ruins  of  the 
departed.  Mighty  astronomical  tendencies  are 
secretly  but  relentlessly  at  work,  and  immense 
vicissitudes  are  in  store  for  this  clod  of  our 
nativity.  The  earth  is  doomed  to  be  frozen  to 
death.  In  a  few  million  years,  according  to 
astronomers,  the  sun  will  have  shrunken  to  a 
fraction  of  his  present  size,  and  will  have  become 
correspondingly  reduced  in  heat-giving  powers. 
It  is  estimated  that  in  twelve  or  fifteen  million 
years  the  sun,  upon  whose  mighty  dispensations 
all  life  and  activity  on  the  earth  are  absolutely 
dependent,  will  become  so  enfeebled  that  no  form 
of  life  on  the  earth  will  be  possible.  The  partially- 
cooled  earth  itself  is  giving  up  its  internal  warmth, 

3 


34  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

and  will  continue  to  give  it  up  until  it  is  the  same 
temperature  as  the  surrounding  abysms,  which  is 
the  frightful  negative  of  something  like  270  centi- 
grade degrees.  These  are  not  very  cheerful  facts 
for  those  who  inhabit  the  earth  to  contemplate. 
But  they  that  seek  the  things  that  cheer  must 
seek  another  sphere.  No  power  can  stay  the 
emaciation  of  suns  or  the  thievery  of  enveloping 
immensities.  Old  age  is  inevitable.  It  is  far  off, 
but  it  is  as  certain  as  human  decay,  and  as 
mournful.  In  that  dreadful  but  inevitable  time 
no  living  being  will  be  left  in  this  world ;  there 
will  be  no  cities  nor  states  nor  vanities  nor  creep- 
ing things,  no  flowers,  no  twilights,  no  love,  only 
a  frozen  sphere.  The  oceans  that  now  rave 
against  the  rocky  flanks  of  the  continents  will  be 
locked  in  eternal  immobility;  the  atmospheres, 
which  to-day  drive  their  fleecy  flocks  over  the 
azure  meads  of  heaven  and  float  sweet  sounds  and 
feathered  forms,  will  be,  in  that  terrible  time, 
turned  to  stone ;  the  radiant  woods  and  fields, 
the  home  of  the  myriads  and  the  green  play-places 
of  the  shadows,  will,  like  all  that  live,  move,  and 
breathe,  have  rotted  into  the  everlasting  lumber 
of  the  elements.  There  will  be  no  Europe  then, 
no  pompous  philosophies,  no  hellish  rich,  and  no 
gods.  All  will  have  suffered  indescribable  refrigera- 
tion. The  earth  will  be  a  fluidless,  lifeless,  sunless 
cinder,  unimaginably  dead  and  desolate,  a  decrepit 
and  pitiful  old  ruin  falling  endlessly  among  heart- 
less immensities,  the  universal  tomb  of  the 
activities. 


FACTORS  OF  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION     35 

The  universe  is  an  evolution.  Change  is  as 
extensive  as  time  and  space.  The  present  has 
come  out  of  that  which  has  been,  and  will  enter 
into  and  determine  that  which  is  to  be.  Every- 
thing has  a  biography.  Everything  has  evolved— 
everything — from  the  murmur  on  the  lips  of  the 
speechless  babe  to  the  soul  of  the  poet,  and  from 
the  molecule  to  Jehovah. 

VIII.  The  Factors  of  Organic  Evolution. 

The  animal  kingdom  represents  one  of  the  two 
grand  branches  of  the  organic  universe.  It  has 
been  evolved — evolved  in  a  manner  as  simple  and 
straightforward  as  it  is  revolting.  It  has  all  been 
brought  about  by  partiality  or  selection.  Genera- 
tions of  beings  have  come  into  existence.  The 
individual  members  of  each  generation  have 
differed  from  each  other — differed  in  size,  strength, 
speed,  colour,  shape,  sagacity,  luck,  and  likelihood 
of  life.  No  two  beings,  not  even  those  born  from 
the  same  womb,  are  in  all  respects  identical. 
Hardships  have  come.  They  have  come  from 
the  inanimate  universe  in  the  form  of  floods,  fires, 
frosts,  accidents,  diseases,  droughts,  storms,  and 
the  like ;  from  other  species,  who  were  competitors 
or  enemies ;  and  from  unbrotherly  members  of 
the  same  species.  Some  have  survived,  but  the 
great  majority  have  perished.  Only  a  fraction, 
and  generally  an  appallingly  small  fraction,  of 
each  generation  of  a  species  have  lived  to  maturity. 
The  lobster  lays  10,000  eggs  in  a  season,  yet  the 
mortality  is  such  that  the  number  of  lobsters  do 

3—2 


36  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

not  increase  from  one  year  to  another.  The 
elephant  is  the  slowest  breeder  of  all  animals,  yet, 
if  they  should  all  live,  the  offspring  of  a  single 
pair  in  750  years  would,  according  to  Darwin, 
number  nearly  19,000,000.  It  has  been  shown 
that  at  the  normal  rate  of  increase  of  English 
sparrows,  if  none  were  to  die  save  of  old  age,  it 
would  take  but  twenty  years  for  a  single  pair  to 
give  one  sparrow  to  every  square  inch  in  the  State 
of  Indiana  (7).  A  single  cyclops  (one  of  the 
humbler  crustaceans)  may  have  5,000,000  descen- 
dants in  a  season.  One  aphis  will  produce  100 
young,  and  these  young  will  reproduce  in  like 
manner  for  ten  generations  in  a  season,  when,  if 
they  should  all  live,  there  would  be  a  quintillion 
of  young.  A  female  white  ant,  when  adult,  does 
nothing  but  lie  in  a  cell  and  lay  eggs.  She  lays 
80,000  eggs  a  day  regularly  for  several  months. 
An  oyster  lays  2,000,000  eggs  in  a  season,  and  if 
all  these  eggs  came  to  maturity  a  few  dozen 
oysters  might  supply  the  markets  of  the  world. 
The  tapeworm  is  said  to  produce  the  incredible 
number  of  1,000,000,000  ova,  and  some  of  the 
humbler  plants  three  times  this  number  of  spores. 
If  each  egg  of  the  codfish  should  produce  an  adult, 
a  single  pair  in  twenty-five  years  would  produce  a 
mass  of  fish  larger  than  the  earth.  Lower  forms 
of  life  are  even  more  prolific  than  the  higher. 
Maupas  said  that  certain  microscopic  infusorians 
which  he  studied  multiplied  so  rapidly  that,  if 
they  should  continue  to  multiply  for  thirty-eight 
days,  and  all  of  them  should  live,  any  one  of  them 


FACTORS  OF  ORGANIC  EVOLUTION    37 

would  produce  a  mass  of  protoplasm  as  big  as 
the  sun. 

Those  of  each  generation  that  have  died  have 
been  inferior,  or  unfitted  to  the  environment 
in  which  they  found  themselves.  Those  that 
have  survived  have  been  superior,  superior  in 
something  —  bigness,  cunning,  courage,  virtue, 
vitality,  strength,  speed,  littleness,  or  ferocity — 
something  that  has  related  them  advantageously 
to  surrounding  conditions.  The  surviving  remnant 
of  each  generation  have  become  the  progenitors 
of  the  next  generation,  and  have  transmitted,  or 
tended  to  transmit,  to  their  offspring  the  qualities 
of  their  superiority.  This  winnowing  has  gone  on 
in  each  generation  of  living  beings  during  many 
millions  of  years — almost  ever  since  life  com- 
menced to  be  on  the  earth.  Some  have  continued 
themselves,  and  others  have  died  childless.  The 
environment  of  each  species  has  been  an  immense 
sieve,  and  only  the  superior  have  gone  through  it. 
Different  environments  have  emphasised  different 
qualities  of  structure  and  disposition,  and  have 
thus  given  rise  to  permanent  varieties  in  survival. 
These  varieties,  through  the  accumulated  effects 
of  many  generations  of  selection,  have  diverged 
into  species ;  species,  after  a  still  longer  series  of 
selections,  have  evolved  into  genera ;  genera  have 
evolved  into  families;  families  into  orders;  and  so 
on.  In  this  simple,  terrible  manner  have  all  the 
branches  of  organic  beings  (thanks  to  the  horrors 
of  a  million  ages)  been  brought  into  existence. 

Variation,  therefore,  which  furnishes  variety  in 


38  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

offspring;  Heredity,  which  tends  to  perpetuate 
peculiarities  by  causing  offspring  to  resemble 
more  or  less  the  characters  of  their  parents ;  and 
Environment,  which  determines  the  character  of 
the  selections,  are  the  three  factors,  and  the  only 
three  factors,  in  organic  evolution. 

IX.  The  Evidences  of  Organic  Evolution. 

That  the  forms  of  life  to-day  found  on  the  earth 
have  come  into  existence  by  the  evolution  of  the 
more  complex  forms  from  the  simpler,  and  of  these 
simpler  forms  from  still  simpler,  through  the  ever- 
operating  law  of  Selection,  is  a  necessary  conclusion 
from  the  following  facts : 

I.  The  existence  in  the  animal  world  of  all 
grades  of  structures,  from  the  humblest  possible 
protozoan,  whose  body  consists  of  a  single  simple 
speck,  to  the  most  powerful  and  complex  of 
mammals.  There  are  estimated  to  be  something 
like  a  million  species  of  animals  living  on  the 
earth  to-day.  There  may  be  several  times  this 
number.  These  species  are  linked  together  by 
millions  of  varieties,  and  are  so  related  to  each 
other  that  they  may  be  all  gathered  together  into 
various  genera ;  these  genera  may  be  grouped  into 
families,  the  families  into  orders,  and  the  orders 
into  seven  or  eight  great  primary  phyla.  By 
taking  existing  species  and  adding  to  them  the 
extinct  species  of  the  rocks,  and  placing  them  all 
according  to  their  structural  affinities,  it  is  pos- 
sible to  arrange  them  in  the  form  of  a  tree  with 
the  various  phyla,  orders,  families,  genera,  and 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  39 

species,  branching  and  rebranching  from  the  main 
trunk.  The  existence  of  structures,  so  graduated 
as  to  render  such  an  arrangement  possible,  is  in 
itself  suggestive  of  a  common  relationship  and 
origin. 

2.  Evolution  is  suggested  by  the  similarities 
and  homologies  of  structure  found  throughout  the 
animal  kingdom.  Some  of  these  similarities  and 
homologies  have  already  been  mentioned.  They 
are  everywhere — remoter  and  more  fundamental, 
some  of  them,  others  closer  and  more  detailed. 
To  the  untrained  mind,  which  sees  surfaces  only, 
and  not  even  surfaces  well,  the  animal  world  is  an 
interminable  miscellany  of  forms.  But  to  the 
biologist,  who  looks  deeper  and  with  immense 
acumen  over  the  whole  field  of  animal  life,  there 
are  only  seven  or  eight  different  types  of  structure 
in  the  entire  animal  world.  These  seven  or  eight 
types  correspond  with  the  primary  classes,  or 
phyla,  into  which  animals  are  divided,  viz.,  pro- 
tozoa, sponges,  celenterates,  echinoderms,  worms, 
mollusks,  arthropods,  and  vertebrates.  However 
widely  the  members  of  each  of  these  great  groups 
may  differ  among  themselves  in  colour,  size, 
habits  of  life,  and  the  like,  the  members  of  each 
group  all  resemble  each  other  fundamentally. 
Moles  differ  from  monkeys,  bats  from  men,  and 
birds  from  crocodiles  and  toads.  They  differ 
enormously.  But  they  are  all  vertebrates  with 
red  blood,  double  body  cavities,  backbones,  two 
pairs  of  limbs,  and  five  fingers  on  each  limb. 
When  they  are  looked  at  superficially,  there  is 


40  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

not  much  similarity  between  a  water-strider  and 
a  butterfly  or  between  a  stag-beetle  and  a  gnat. 
But  they  are  all,  in  reality,  built  according  to  the 
same  plan.  Like  all  other  insects,  they  have  six 
legs,  a  sheath-like  skeleton,  and  bodies  character- 
istically divided  into  head,  thorax,  and  abdomen. 
It  is  the  same  with  all  other  great  classes  of  beings. 
All  worms  resemble  each  other ;  and  so  do  all 
mollusks,  although  they  may  differ  in  particulars 
as  widely  as  nautiluses  and  clams.  Echinoderms 
have  a  radiate  structure,  celenterates  and  sponges 
are  vase-like  in  shape,  and  protozoa  are  one-celled. 
The  differences  in  structure  among  the  members 
of  a  group  consist  in  different  modifications  of  a 
fundamental  type.  Among  the  vertebrates  the 
fore-limb  may  be  an  arm,  a  leg,  a  wing,  a  shovel,  a 
flipper,  or  a  fin.  But  in  all  cases  it  is  the  same 
organ — that  is,  the  same  implement  modified  to 
serve  different  ends.  Take  the  mouth-parts  of 
insects.  In  the  grasshopper  and  cricket  these 
parts  are  fitted  for  grinding;  in  the  moths  and 
butterflies  they  are  fashioned  into  long  tubes  for 
sucking  the  sweets  of  flowers ;  in  the  mosquito  they 
form  an  elaborate  apparatus  for  drilling  and  drink- 
ing; and  in  the  mayfly  the  mouth-parts,  though 
present,  are  not  used  at  all.  In  all  of  these  animals 
these  parts  are  essentially  the  same,  although  differ- 
ing so  much  in  their  forms  and  purposes  that  the 
unscientific  can  scarcely  be  made  to  believe  they 
are  fundamentally  alike.  There  is  no  fact  more 
familiar  to  the  biologist  or  more  frequently  met 
with  in  the  fields  of  animal  morphology  than  the 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  41 

fact  that  the  same  general  type  may  be  hammered 
into  dozens,  or  hundreds,  or  even  thousands,  of 
different  patterns  by  the  incessant  industry  of  its 
surroundings,  and  that  the  same  organic  part  may 
be  moulded  into  various  implements  serving  totally 
different  ends  by  the  environmental  vicissitudes 
of  time  and  space.  On  the  hypothesis  that  the 
members  of  each  group  of  animals  possessing 
common  characteristics,  whether  the  group  be 
large  or  small,  have  sprung  from  a  common 
ancestry,  and  that  the  differences  in  structure 
have  arisen  as  a  result  of  differences  in  environ- 
ment, the  similarities  and  homologies  of  structure 
existing  among  animals  are  perfectly  intelligible. 
But  on  any  other  supposition  they  are  in- 
explicable. 

3.  Evolution  is  suggested  by  the  remarkable 
series  of  phenomena  presented  by  embryology. 
There  are  at  least  four  facts  in  the  developmental 
history  of  every  creature  which  can  hardly  be 
accounted  for  on  any  other  supposition  than  that 
of  organic  evolution. 

First,  the  fact  that  every  animal,  above  the 
lowest,  individually  passes  through  an  evolution 
between  the  beginning  of  its  existence  and  its 
maturity.  Terrestrial  beings  are  not  born,  like 
Minerva,  full-grown.  They  grow.  They  evolve. 
They  commence  close  down  to  the  very  atoms. 
And  from  this  lowly  genesis  they  rise,  through 
a  series  of  marvellous  changes,  to  that  high  state 
of  perfection  and  greatness  from  which  they 
descend  to  dissolution. 


42  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

If  we  knew  by  actual  observation  as  little  con- 
cerning the  evolution  of  individuals  as  we  do  of 
the  evolution  of  species — if  we  had  always  been 
used  to  seeing  animals,  including  ourselves,  in  full 
bloom — had  never  watched  the  tadpole,  the  pupa, 
and  the  babe  pass  through  their  wonderful  meta- 
morphoses on  their  way  to  maturity,  it  would 
probably  be  just  as  hard  for  many  minds  to 
believe  that  animals  evolve  individually  to  be 
what  they  are  as  it  is  for  them  to  believe  that 
species  have  grown  to  be  what  they  are.  In  the 
case  of  individuals,  however,  the  evolution  takes 
place  right  before  our  eyes  largely,  while  the 
evolution  of  species  goes  on  so  slowly  and  stretches 
back  so  far  into  the  past  that  it  can  only  be 
inferred. 

Second,  the  fact  that  animals,  no  matter  how 
much  they  may  differ  from  each  other  at  maturity, 
all  begin  existence  at  the  same  place.  Every 
animal  commences  its  organic  existence  as  an  egg 
— as  a  one-celled  animal — as  an  organism  identical 
in  structure  with  the  simplest  protozoan.  The 
ova  of  whales  '  are  no  larger  than  fern  seeds.' 
The  eggs  of  the  coral,  the  crab,  the  ape,  and  the 
man  are  so  precisely  alike  that  the  highest  powers 
of  the  microscope  cannot  distinguish  between 
them. 

Third,  the  fact  that  the  members  of  the  same 
great  group  of  animals  in  their  individual  develop- 
ment pass  through  similar  stages  of  evolution.  The 
'  worm '  stage  in  the  development  of  most  insects 
and  the  '  fish '  stage  of  frogs  are  well  known. 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  43 

There  are  no  more  remarkable  instances  of  in- 
dividual evolution  in  the  whole  range  of  animal 
life.  The  fish,  the  reptile,  the  bird,  the  dog,  and 
the  human  being — all  vertebrates,  in  short — 
cannot  for  some  time  after  their  embryonic  com- 
mencement be  distinguished  from  each  other. 
'  The  feet  of  lizards  and  mammals,  the  wings  and 
feet  of  birds,  and  the  hands  and  feet  of  men,'  says 
the  illustrious  Von  Baer,  as  quoted  by  Darwin, 
'  all  arise  from  the  same  fundamental  form '  (8). 

'  It  is  quite  in  the  later  stages  of  development,1 
says  Huxley,  '  that  the  human  being  presents 
marked  differences  from  the  ape,  while  the  latter 
departs  as  much  from  the  dog  in  its  development 
as  the  man  does '  (6). 

Not  only  frogs,  but  reptiles,  birds,  and  mammals, 
including  man,  all  have  gills  at  a  certain  stage 
in  their  embryonic  development.  Nearly  all  the 
lower  invertebrate  animals  are  hermaphroditic — 
that  is,  in  the  body  of  each  animal  is  found  the 
two  kinds  of  sex  organs  which  in  the  higher 
animals  exist  in  distinct  animals.  And  frogs, 
birds,  and  other  higher  animals,  which  as  adults 
are  unisexual,  have,  as  an  inheritance  from  these 
primitive  forms,  hermaphroditic  embryos  (10). 

Fourth,  the  fact  that  the  structural  stages  through 
which  animals  in  embryo  pass  correspond  in  a 
wonderful  manner  with  the  permanent  structures 
of  those  lower  forms  which  extend  serially  back  to 
the  beginnings  of  life.  It  is  the  proudest  boast  ot 
the  embryologist  that  he  is  able  to  know  the  route 
through  which  any  species  has  come  to  be  what  it 


44  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

is  by  a  simple  study  of  the  individual  evolution  of 
its  members.  Each  animal  repeats  in  its  individual 
evolution  the  evolution  of  its  species.  This  re- 
Capitulation  is  not  always  complete — is,  in  fact, 
frequently  vague,  sometimes  circuitous,  and  often 
broken  or  abbreviated.  Processes  requiring  origin- 
ally centuries  or  thousands  of  years  to  accomplish 
are  here  telescoped  into  a  few  months,  or  even 
days.  It  is  not  strange  that  the  process  is  im- 
perfect. But  so  firmly  is  the  belief  in  the  cor- 
respondence of  ontogeny  and  phylogeny  fixed  in 
the  minds  of  modern  biologists  that,  in  determining 
the  classification  and  affinities  of  any  particular 
animal,  more  reliance  is  placed  on  the  facts  of 
embryology  than  on  those  of  adult  structure. 

The  first  thing  that  an  animal  becomes  after  it 
is  an  egg — unless  it  is  a  one-celled  animal,  in 
which  case  it  remains  always  an  egg — is  two  cells ; 
these  two  cells  become  four;  these  four  become 
eight;  and  so  on,  until  the  embryo  becomes  a 
many-celled  ball,  consisting  of  a  single  layer  of 
cells  surrounding  a  fluid  interior.  A  dimple  forms 
in  the  cell  layer  on  one  side  of  this  ball,  and,  by 
deepening  to  a  hollow,  changes  the  ball  into  a 
double-walled  sac.  This  is  the  gastrula — the  per- 
manent structure  of  the  sponges  and  celenterates, 
and  an  (almost)  invariable  stage  in  the  larval  deve- 
lopment of  all  animals  above  the  sponges  and 
celenterates.  The  gastrula  becomes  a  worm  (or 
an  insect  or  a  fish  through  the  worm)  by  elongation 
and  enlargement,  and  by  the  development  of  the 
endoderm,  which  is  the  inner  layer  of  the  cell  wall, 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  45 

into  organs  of  nutrition  and  reproduction,  and  by 
the  development  of  the  ectoderm,  which  is  the  outer 
cell  layer,  into  organs  of  motion  and  sensation. 

The  embryonic  development  of  a  human  being 
is  not  different  in  kind  from  the  embryonic  de- 
velopment of  any  other  animal.  Every  human 
being  at  the  beginning  of  his  organic  existence 
is  a  protozoan,  about  T5-j  inch  in  diameter;  at 
another  stage  of  development  he  is  a  tiny  sac- 
shaped  mass  of  cells  without  blood  or  nerves,  the 
gastrula ;  at  another  stage  he  is  a  worm,  with  a 
pulsating  tube  instead  of  a  heart,  and  without 
head,  neck,  spinal  column,  or  limbs;  at  another 
stage  he  has,  as  a  backbone,  a  rod  of  cartilage 
extending  along  the  back,  and  a  faint  nerve  cord, 
as  in  amphioxus,  the  lowest  of  the  vertebrates ;  at 
another  stage  he  is  a  fish  with  a  two-chambered 
heart,  mesonephric  kidneys,  and  gill-slits  with  gill 
arteries  leading  to  them,  just  as  in  fishes;  at 
another  stage  he  is  a  reptile  with  a  three-chambered 
heart,  and  voiding  his  excreta  through  a  cloaca  like 
other  reptiles ;  and  finally,  when  he  enters  upon 
post-natal  sins  and  actualities,  he  is  a  sprawling, 
squalling,  unreasoning  quadruped.  The  human 
larva  from  the  fifth  to  the  seventh  month  of 
development  is  covered  with  a  thick  growth  of  hair 
and  has  a  true  caudal  appendage,  like  the  monkey. 
At  this  stage  the  embryo  has  in  all  thirty-eight 
vertebrae,  nine  of  which  are  caudal,  and  the  great 
toe  extends  at  right  angles  to  the  other  toes,  and  is 
not  longer  than  the  other  toes,  but  shorter,  as  in 
the  ape. 


46  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

These  facts  are  unmistakable.  There  is  a  reason 
for  everything,  and  there  is  a  reason  for  these  trans- 
formations through  which  each  generation  of  living 
beings  journeys.  The  individual  passes  through 
them  because  the  species  to  which  he  belongs  has 
passed  through  them.  They  represent  ancestral 
wanderings.  As  if  to  emphasise  the  kinship  of  all 
of  life's  forms  and  to  render  incontrovertible  the 
fact  of  universal  evolution,  Nature  compels  every 
individual  to  commence  existence  at  the  same 
place,  and  to  recapitulate  in  his  individual  evolu- 
tion the  phylogenetic  journeyings  of  his  species. 

4.  That  existing  forms  of  life  have  been  evolved 
from  other  forms,  and  that  these  ancestral  forms 
have  been  different  from  those  derived  from  them, 
is  shown  by  the  occasional  appearance  of  ante- 
cedent and  abandoned  types  of  structure  among 
the  offspring  of  existing  species.  Occasionally  a 
human  child  is  born  strangely  unlike  its  parents, 
but  bearing  an  unmistakable  resemblance  in  looks 
and  disposition  to  his  great-grandfather  or  some 
other  remote  ancestor.  This  is  atavism,  that 
tendency  to  revert  to  ancestral  types  which  is  pre- 
valent among  all  animals.  We  may  think  of  it 
figuratively  as  a  flash  of  indecision  when  Nature 
hesitates  for  a  moment  whether  to  adopt  a  new 
form  of  structure  or  cling  to  the  old  and  tried. 
Horses  and  mules  are  sometimes  born  with  three 
toes  on  each  foot,  and  zebra-like  stripes  on  their 
legs  and  shoulders ;  and  domestic  pigeons,  such  as 
are  naturally  black,  red,  or  mottled,  occasionally 
produce  offspring  with  blue  plumage  and  two  black 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  47 

wing-bars,  like  the  wild  rock-dove,  from  which  all 
domestic  breeds  have  sprung.  In  man  the  cheek- 
bone and  the  frontal  bone  of  the  forehead  consist 
normally  each  of  a  single  bone.  But  in  children 
and  human  embryos  these  bones  are  always  double, 
as  is  normally  the  case  in  adults  among  some  oi 
the  anthropoids  and  other  mammals.  Gills  appear 
regularly  in  the  embryos  of  reptiles,  birds,  and 
mammals,  and  human  young  are  sometimes  born 
with  gill-slits  on  the  neck.  There  are  times  when, 
owing  to  inaccurate  or  incomplete  embryological 
development,  these  fish-like  characteristics  are  so 
perfect  at  birth  as  to  allow  liquids,  on  being 
swallowed,  to  pass  out  through  them  and  trickle 
down  on  the  outside  of  the  neck.  Many  muscles 
are  occasionally  developed  in  man  which  are 
normal  in  the  apes  and  other  mammals.  As 
many  as  seven  different  muscular  variations  have 
been  found  in  a  single  human  being,  every  one  of 
which  were  muscles  found  normally  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  apes  (8). 

5.  Closely  akin  to  atavism,  which  is  the  occa- 
sional persistence  of  ancestral  types  of  character, 
is  the  regular  occurrence  of  vestigial  organs  or 
structures,  organs  which  in  ancestral  forms  have 
definite  functions,  but  which  in  existing  species, 
owing  to  changed  conditions,  are  rudimentary  and 
useless.  On  the  back  of  each  ankle  of  the  horse 
are  two  splints,  the  atrophied  remains  of  the  second 
and  fourth  toes.  Similar  vestiges  of  two  obsolete 
toes  are  also  found  just  back  of  the  wrists  and 
ankles  on  all  the  two-toed  ungulates,  such  as  the 


48 

cow  and  sheep.  In  the  body  of  the  whale  where 
hind- limbs  would  naturally  be,  there  are  found  the 
anatomical  ruins  of  these  organs  in  the  form  of  a 
few  diminutive  bones.  The  same  thing  is  true  in 
the  sirenians.  In  the  Greenland  whale  there  are 
remnants  of  both  femur  and  tibia  in  the  region  of 
the  atrophied  hind-limbs.  The  snakes  are  limb- 
less, but  the  pythons  and  boas  have  internal 
remnants  of  hind-limbs,  and  sometimes  even  clawed 
structures  representing  toes.  The  so-called  'glass- 
snake  '  or  'joint-snake'  (which  is  really  a  limbless 
lizard)  has  four  complete  internal  limbs.  Young 
turtles,  parrots,  and  whalebone  whales  have  teeth, 
but  the  adults  of  these  animals  are  toothless. 
Cows,  sheep,  deer,  and  other  ruminants,  never  have 
as  adults  any  upper  incisors,  but  these  teeth  are 
found  in  the  foetal  stages  of  these  animals  just 
under  the  gums.  The  female  frog  has  rudimentary 
male  reproductive  organs,  and  the  male  has  cor- 
responding vestiges  of  female  organs.  Similar 
remnants  of  the  reproductive  structures  exist  in 
many  other  animals.  They  represent  stages  in 
the  transition  from  the  hermaphroditism  of  primi- 
tive animals  to  the  unisexuality  of  the  higher 
forms,  the  separation  of  the  sex  organs  into  those 
of  male  and  female  having  come  about  through  the 
decay  of  one  set  of  structures  in  each  individual. 

For  reasons  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  mention 
here,  biologists  believe  that  insects  all  originated 
from  a  common  parental  form,  with  two  pairs  of 
wings  and  six  legs.  Insects  all  retain  their  original 
allowance  of  legs,  but  in  many  species  one  or  the 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  49 

other  pair  of  wings  has  become  more  or  less 
degenerated.  In  the  whole  order  of  flies  the  back 
pair  of  wings  is  represented  by  a  couple  of  insig- 
nificant knobs.  In  the  Strepsiptera,  a  sub-order  of 
beetles,  the  front-wings  are  similarly  reduced, 
being  mere  twisted  filaments.  Many  parasites, 
such  as  fleas  and  ticks,  whose  mode  of  life  renders 
organs  of  aerial  locomotion  unnecessary,  are  en- 
tirely wingless.  The  insects  of  small  isolated 
islands  are  also  largely  without  wings,  the  propor- 
tion of  wingless  species  being  much  larger  than 
among  insects  inhabiting  continents.  This  is  due 
to  their  greater  liability  on  small  land  masses  of 
being  carried  out  to  sea  and  drowned,  owing  to 
the  feebleness  and  uncertainty  of  insect  flight. 
On  the  island  of  Madeira,  out  of  the  550  species 
found  there,  220  species  no  longer  have  the  power 
of  flight. 

Air-breathing  animals  —  amphibians,  reptiles, 
birds,  and  mammals — have  normally  a  pair  of 
lungs  —  a  right  one  and  a  left  one.  But  in 
snakes  and  snake-like  lizards,  where  the  body  is 
very  slender  and  elongated,  only  one  lung,  some- 
times the  right  one,  and  sometimes  the  left,  is  fully 
developed.  The  right  ovary  is  likewise  aborted  in 
all  birds,  the  left  one  yielding  all  the  eggs.  The 
swifts  and  frigate  birds  live  almost  their  whole 
lives  long  on  the  wing,  and  the  legs  of  these  birds 
have  grown  so  short  and  weak  and  rudimentary,  as 
a  result  of  their  constant  life  in  the  air,  that  they 
can  scarcely  walk.  The  chimney  swift  is  said 
never  to  alight  anywhere  except  on  the  sooty  inner 

4 


50  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

walls  of  the  chimney  where  its  nest  is.  Its  food 
consists  of  insects  which  it  gathers  in  the  air,  and 
the  few  dead  twigs  used  in  making  its  nest  are 
nipped  from  the  tree  while  the  bird  continues  its 
flight.  The  ostriches,  cassowaries,  and  many  other 
birds,  have,  on  the  other  hand,  developed  their  legs 
at  the  expense  of  their  wings.  The  ostrich  is  said 
to  be  able  to  outrun  the  horse,  but  it  has  no  power 
of  flight,  although  it  has  wings  and  wing  muscles, 
and  even  the  skin-folds  covering  the  wings  corre- 
sponding to  those  of  birds  that  fly.  But  its  whole 
flying  apparatus  is  in  ruins.  The  rudimentary 
hind-toe  of  birds  is  a  vestigial  organ,  and  so  are 
the  claws  which  appear  on  the  thumb  and  first 
finger  of  all  young  birds.  So  also  are  the  rudi- 
ments of  eyes  in  cave  crickets,  fishes,  and  other 
inhabitants  of  total  darkness.  The  flounder  and 
other  so-called  flat  fishes  swim  straight  up,  as 
ordinary  fishes  do,  when  young.  But  as  they  grow 
they  incline  more  and  more  to  one  side,  and  finally 
swim  entirely  on  their  side,  the  eye  on  the  lower 
side  migrating  around,  and  joining  the  other  on 
the  upper  side  of  the  head. 

About  the  first  thing  a  human  infant  does  on 
coming  into  the  world  is  to  prove  its  arboreal 
origin  by  grasping  and  spitefully  clinging  to  every- 
thing that  stimulates  its  palms.  A  little  peeper- 
less  babe  an  hour  old  can  perform  feats  of  strength 
with  its  hands  and  arms  that  many  men  and 
women  cannot  equal.  It  can  support  the  entire 
weight  of  its  body  for  several  seconds  hanging  by 
its  hands.  Dr.  Robinson,  an  English  physician, 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  51 

found  as  a  result  of  sixty  experiments  on  as  many 
infants,  more  than  half  of  whom  were  less  than  an 
hour  old,  that  with  two  exceptions  every  babe  was 
able  to  hang  to  the  finger  or  to  a  small  stick,  and 
sustain  the  whole  weight  of  the  body  for  at  least 
ten  seconds.  Twelve  of  those  just  born  held  on 
for  nearly  a  minute.  At  the  age  of  two  or  three 
weeks,  when  this  power  is  greatest,  several  suc- 
ceeded in  sustaining  themselves  for  over  a  minute 
and  a  half,  two  for  over  two  minutes,  and  one  for 
two  minutes  and  thirty-five  seconds.  The  young 
ape  for  some  weeks  after  birth  clings  tenaciously 
to  its  mother's  neck  and  hair,  and  the  instinct  of 
the  child  to  cling  to  objects  is  probably  a  survival 
of  the  instinct  of  the  young  ape.  I  believe  it 
is  Wallace  who  relates  somewhere  an  incident 
which  illustrates  the  instinct  of  the  young  simian 
to  cling  to  something.  Wallace  had  captured 
a  young  ape,  and  was  carrying  it  to  camp,  when 
the  little  fellow  happened  to  get  its  hands  on 
the  naturalist's  whiskers,  which  it  mistook,  evi- 
dently, for  the  hirsute  property  of  its  mother, 
and,  driven  by  the  powerful  instinct  of  self-pre- 
servation, it  hung  on  to  them  so  desperately  it 
could  scarcely  be  pulled  loose.  Many  mammals 
are  provided  with  a  well-developed  muscular 
apparatus  for  the  manipulation  of  their  ears.  But 
in  man  there  does  not  exist  the  same  necessity  for 
auricular  detection  of  enemies,  and  while  these 
muscles  still  exist,  and  are  capable  of  being  used 
to  a  slight  extent  by  occasional  individuals,  they 
are  generally  so  emaciated  as  to  be  useless. 

4—2 


52  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

Another  vestigial  organ  in  the  body  of  man,  and 
one  of  significance  from  the  standpoint  of  mor- 
phology, is  the  tail.  The  tail  is  an  exceedingly 
unpopular  part  of  the  human  anatomy,  most  men 
and  women  being  unwilling  to  admit  that  they 
have  such  an  appendage.  But  many  a  person 
who  has  hitherto  dozed  in  ignorance  on  this  matter 
has  learned  with  considerable  dismay,  when  he 
has  for  the  first  time  looked  upon  the  undraped 
lineaments  of  the  human  skeleton,  that  man 
actually  has  a  tail.  It  consists  of  three  or  four 
(sometimes  five)  small  vertebrae,  more  or  less 
fused,  at  the  posterior  end  of  the  spinal  column. 
That  this  is  really  a  rudimentary  tail  is  proved 
beyond  a  doubt  by  the  fact  that  in  the  embryo  it 
is  highly  developed,  being  longer  than  the  limbs, 
and  is  provided  with  a  regular  muscular  apparatus 
for  wagging  it.  These  caudal  muscles  are  gener- 
ally represented  "in  gi  own-up  people  by  bands  of 
fibrous  tissue,  but  cases  are  known  where  the  actual 
muscles  have  persisted  through  life  (9). 

The  nictitating  membrane,  which  in  birds  and 
many  reptiles  consists  of  a  half-transparent  curtain 
acting  as  a  lid  to  sweep  the  eye,  is  in  the  human  eye 
dwindled  to  a  small  membranous  remnant,  draped 
at  the  inner  corner.  The  growth  of  hair  over  the 
human  body  surface  may  be  regarded,  in  view  of 
the  sartorial  habits  of  man,  as  a  vestigial  inherit- 
ance from  hairy  ancestors.  One  of  the  most 
notorious  of  the  vestigial  organs  of  man  is  the 
vermiform  appendix,  a  small  slender  sac  opening 
from  the  large  intestine  near  where  the  large 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  53 

intestine  is  joined  by  the  small  intestine.  In  some 
animals  this  organ  is  large  and  performs  an 
important  part  in  the  process  of  digestion.  But 
in  man  it  is  a  mere  rudiment,  not  only  of  no 
possible  aid  in  digestion,  but  the  source  of  frequent 
disease,  and  even  of  death. 

T^ere  are  in  all,  according  to  Darwin,  about 
eighty  vestigial  organs  in  the  human  body.  But 
these  organs  occur  everywhere  throughout  the 
animal  kingdom.  There  is  not  an  order  of  animals, 
nor  of  plants  either,  without  them.  They  are  neces- 
sary facts  growing  out  of  evolution.  Organic  struc- 
tures are  the  result  of  adjustment  to  surrounding 
conditions.  The  continual  changes  in  environment 
to  which  all  organisms  are  exposed  necessitate 
corresponding  changes  in  structure.  And  the 
vestiges  found  in  the  bodies  of  all  animals  repre- 
sent parts  which  in  the  previous  existence  were 
useful  and  necessary  to  a  complete  adjustment  of 
the  organism,  but  which,  owing  to  a  change  of 
emphasis  in  surroundings,  have  become  useless, 
and  consequently  shrunken.  They  are  the 
obsolete  or  obsolescent  parts  of  animal  structure 
— parts  which  have  been  outgrown  and  super- 
seded— the  '  silent  letters  '  of  morphology.  They 
sustain  the  same  relation  to  the  individual 
organism  as  dead  or  dwindling  species  sustain  to 
a  fauna.  They  furnish  indisputable  proof  of  the 
kinship  and  unity  of  the  animal  world. 

6.  It  is  only  on  the  supposition  that  the  life  of 
the  earth  has  evolved  step  by  step  with  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  land  masses,  and  that  the  forms  of  life 


54  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

from  which  existing  forms  were  evolved  were 
dispersed  over  the  earth  at  a  time  when  physio- 
graphic conditions  were  very  different  from  what 
they  are  now,  that  it  is  possible  to  account  for  the 
peculiar  manner  in  which  animals  are  distributed 
over  the  earth.  The  cassowary  is  a  flightless  bird 
of  the  ostrich  order  inhabiting  Australia  and  the 
islands  to  the  north  of  it.  This  bird  is  found  no- 
where else  in  the  world,  and  each  area  has  its  own 
particular  species.  The  same  things  are  also  true 
of  the  kangaroo.  It  is  found  over  a  similar  region, 
with  a  different  species  occupying  each  land  mass. 
Now,  on  the  hypothesis  of  special  creation  there 
is  no  thinkable  reason  why  these  animals  should 
be  divided,  as  they  are,  into  distinct  species,  and 
restricted  to  this  particular  region.  But  on  the 
hypothesis  of  evolution  it  is  perfectly  plain.  All 
of  these  regions  at  one  time  were  united  with  one 
another,  and  were  subsequently  submerged  in  part, 
forming  islands.  Each  group  of  animals,  being 
is  Lated  from  every  other  group  and  subjected  to 
somewhat  different  conditions,  developed  a  style 
of  departure  from  the  original  type  of  structure 
different  from  that  of  every  other  group  in  response 
to  the  peculiar  conditions  operating  upon  it.  This 
has  led,  in  the  course  of  centuries  of  selection,  to 
the  formation  of  distinct  species  such  as  exist 
to-day. 

Lorn  bock  Strait,  a  narrow  neck  of  water  between 
Bali  and  Lombock  Island,  and  Macassar  Strait, 
separating  Celebes  from  Borneo,  are  parts  of  a 
continuous  passage  of  water  which  in  remote  times 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  55 

separated  two  continents — an  Indo- Malayan  con- 
tinent to  which  belonged  Borneo,  Sumatra,  Java, 
and  the  Malay  Peninsula;  and  an  Austro- Malayan 
continent,  now  represented  by  Australia,  Celebes, 
the  Moluccas,  New  Guinea,  Solomon's  Islands,  etc. 
Wallace  first  announced  this  ancient  boundary, 
and  it  has  been  called  '  Wallace's  line.'  He  was 
led  to  infer  its  existence  by  the  fact  which  he 
observed  as  he  travelled  about  from  island  to 
island,  that,  while  the  faunas  of  these  two  regions 
are  as  wholes  very  different  from  each  other,  the 
faunas  of  the  various  land  patches  in  each  area 
have  a  wonderful  similarity.  Australia  is  a  verit- 
able museum  of  old  and  obsolete  forms  of  both 
plants  and  animals.  Its  fauna  and  flora  are  made 
up  prevailingly  of  forms  such  as  have  on  the  other 
continents  long  been  superseded  by  more  special- 
ised species.  No  true  mammals,  excepting  men 
and  a  few  rats,  lived  in  Australia  when  English- 
men first  went  there.  The  most  powerful  animals 
were  the  comparatively  helpless  marsupials.  The 
explanation  of  these  remarkable  facts  is  probably 
this :  The  Australian  continent,  which  formerly 
included  New  Guinea  and  other  islands  to  the 
north,  has  not  been  connected  with  the  other  land 
masses  for  a  very  long  period  of  time.  The  develop- 
ment upon  the  other  continents  of  the  more 
powerful  mammals,  especially  of  the  ungulates 
and  the  carnivora,  resulted  in  the  extermination 
of  the  more  helpless  forms  from  most  of  the 
earth's  surface.  But  Australia,  protected  by  its 
isolation,  has  retained  to  this  day  its  old-fashioned 


56  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

forms  of  life,  neither  land  animals  nor  plants 
having  been  able  to  navigate  the  intervening 
straits.  This  supposition  is  strengthened  by  the 
fact  that  fossil  remains  of  marsupials  are  to-day 
found  scattered  all  over  the  world,  while,  with 
the  exception  of  the  American  opossums,  living 
marsupials  are  found  only  in  Australia  and  its 
islands.  There  is  to-day  not  a  single  survivor  of 
these  once-numerous  races  in  either  Europe,  Asia, 
or  Africa.  Similar  facts  of  distribution  are  furnished 
by  the  lemurs — those  small,  monkey-like  animals 
with  fox  faces,  which  are  sometimes  called  '  half- 
apes,'  si:  ce  they  are  supposed  to  be  the  link  con- 
necting the  true  apes  with  lower  forms.  Fossil 
lemurs  are  found  in  both  America  and  Europe, 
but  lemurs  are  now  extinct  in  both  continents. 
Those  of  America  were  probably  exterminated  by 
the  carnivora,  who  are  known  to  be  very  fond  of 
monkey  meat  of  all  kinds.  The  European  lemurs 
seem  to  have  migrated  southward  into  eastern 
Africa  at  a  time  when  Madagascar  formed  a  part  of 
the  mainland.  '  There  they  have  been  isolated, 
and  have  developed  in  a  fashion  comparable  to 
that  which  has  occurred  in  the  case  of  the 
Australian  marsupials.  Of  fifty  living  species, 
thirty  are  confined  to  Madagascar,  and  the  lemurs 
are  there  exceedingly  numerous  in  individuals. 
Outside  of  Madagascar  they  only  maintain  a 
precarious  footing  in  forests  or  on  islands,  and  are 
usually  few  in  number'  (10). 

If  the  earth  were  peopled  by  migrations  from 
Ararat,  it  would  require  a  good  deal  of  intellectual 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  57 

legerdemain  to  show  why  the  sloths  are  confined 
to  South  America  and  the  monotremes  to  Australia 
and  its  islands.  The  reindeer  of  northern  Europe 
and  Asia,  and  the  elk  and  caribou  of  Arctic 
America,  are  so  much  alike  they  must  have 
descended  from  a  common  ancestry,  and  been 
developed  into  distinct  species  since  the  separation 
of  North  America  and  Eurasia.  The  same  thing 
is  probably  also  true  of  the  puma  and  jaguar,  who 
inhabit  the  middle  latitudes  of  the  New  World, 
and  the  lion,  tiger,  and  leopard,  occupying  like 
latitudes  of  the  Old  World.  They  all  belong  to 
the  cat  family,  and  represent  divergences  from 
a  common  feline  type  of  structure.  The  camel 
does  not  exist  normally  outside  of  northern  Africa 
and  central  and  western  Asia.  And  when  the 
camel-like  llama  of  South  America  first  became 
known  to  zoologists,  it  was  a  problem  how  this 
creature  could  have  become  separated  so  far  from 
the  apparent  origin  of  the  camel  family.  But 
since  then  fossil  camels  have  been  found  all  over 
both  North  and  South  America.  And  it  has  even 
been  suspected  that  perhaps  America  was  the 
original  home  of  the  camel,  and  that,  like  the 
horse,  the  camel  migrated  to  the  eastern  hemi- 
sphere at  a  time  when  the  eastern  and  western 
land  masses  were  connected.  The  foxes,  hares, 
and  other  mammals  of  the  upper  Alps,  also  many 
Alpine  plants,  are  like  those  of  the  Arctic  regions. 
The  most  probable  explanation  of  these  resem- 
blances is  that  these  Alpine  species  climbed  up 
into  these  inhospitable  altitudes,  and  were  left 


58  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

stranded  here  on  this  island  of  cold,  when  their 
relatives,  on  the  return  of  warmth  at  the  close  oi 
the  glacial  period,  retreated  back  to  the  ice-bound 
fastnesses  around  the  pole.  It  is  for  a  similar 
reason,  probably,  that  the  flora  of  the  upper 
White  Mountains  resembles  that  of  Labrador. 

7.  One  of  the  strongest  pieces  of  evidence 
bearing  on  evolution  that  is  furnished  by  any 
department  of  knowledge  is  that  furnished  by 
geology.  It  is  the  evidence  of  the  rocks.  Geology 
is,  among  other  things,  a  history  of  the  earth. 
This  history  has  been  written  by  the  earth  itself 
on  laminae  of  stone.  It  is  from  these  records  that 
we  learn  incontestably  the  order  in  which  the 
forms  of  life  have  made  their  appearance  on  the 
earth. 

Three-fourths  of  the  surface  of  the  earth  is  sea. 
Over  the  surface  of  the  remaining  fourth,  except- 
ing in  mountainous  places,  is  a  layer  of  soil,  vary- 
ing from  a  few  feet  to  a  few  hundred  feet  in  depth. 
Beneath  this  coverlet  of  soil,  extending  as  far 
as  man  has  penetrated  into  the  earth,  is  rock. 
Excepting  in  regions  overflowed  by  lava  poured 
out  from  beneath,  or  along  the  backbones  of 
continents  where  the  surface  rocks  have  been 
upheaved  into  folds  and  carried  away  by  denuda- 
tion, the  rocks  immediately  beneath  the  soil,  to 
a  thickness  often  of  thousands  of  feet,  are  in  the 
form  of  layers,  or  sheets,  arranged  one  above 
another.  These  rocks  are  called  sedimentary 
rocks,  as  distinguished  from  the  unlaminated 
roc'cs  of  the  interior.  They  have  been  formed 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  59 

at  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  and  have,  hence,  all 
been  formed  since  the  condensation  of  the  oceans. 
They  have  been  formed  out  of  the  detritus  of 
continents  brought  down  by  the  rivers  and  the 
accumulated  remains  of  animal  and  vegetal  forms 
which  have  slowly  settled  down  through  the  waters. 
They  are  the  successive  cemeteries  of  the  dead  past. 
Such  rocks  are  now  forming  over  the  floors  of  all 
oceans — forming  just  as  they  have  formed  through- 
out the  long  eons  of  geological  history.  Along 
the  axes  of  ancient  mountains  and  in  deep-cut 
canyons  the  rock  layers  are  exposed  to  a  thickness 
of  thousands  of  feet,  in  some  cases  thirty  or  forty 
thousand  feet.  Here  they  lie,  piled  up,  one  on 
top  of  another,  the  great,  broad  pages  upon  which 
are  written  the  long,  dark  story  of  our  planet.  It 
is  the  mightiest  and  most  everlasting  of  all  annals 
— the  autobiography  of  a  world.  It  is  possible,  by 
studying  these  rock  records,  to  know  not  only  the 
kind  of  life  that  lived  in  each  age,  but  a  good  deal 
regarding  the  conditions  in  which  that  life  lived 
and  passed  away.  Just  as  the  naturalist  is  able, 
from  a  single  bone  of  an  unknown  animal,  to 
reconstruct  the  entire  animal  and  to  infer  some- 
thing of  its  surroundings  and  habits  of  life,  and  as 
the  archeologist,  by  going  back  to  the  graves  of 
deceased  races  and  digging  up  the  dust  upon 
which  these  races  wrought,  is  able  to  tell  much 
of  their  history  and  characteristics,  so  the  geologist, 
by  studying  the  bones  of  those  more  distant 
civilisations,  the  civilisations  sandwiched  among 
the  fossiliferous  rocks,  is  able  to  know,  not  only 


60  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

just  the  kind  of  life  that  lived  in  each  age,  but,  by 
comparing  the  species  of  successive  strata,  can 
construct  with  astonishing  fulness  the  genealogi- 
cal outline  of  the  entire  life  process.  The  suc- 
cession of  life  forms  as  they  appear  in  the  rocks, 
with  a  sketch  of  their  probable  genealogy,  is  traced 
elsewhere  in  this  chapter.  It  is  only  necessary  to 
say  here  that  the  order  in  which  the  forms  of  life 
appear  in  the  sedimentary  strata  is  that  of  a 
gradually  increasing  complexity.  The  inverte- 
brates appear  first ;  then  the  fishes,  the  lowest  of 
the  vertebrates ;  after  these  come  the  amphibians ; 
following  these  the  reptiles ;  and  finally  the  birds 
and  mammals. 

8.  There  is  another  reason  for  a  belief  in  evolu- 
tion furnished  by  geology,  but  of  a  somewhat 
different  kind  from  that  just  stated.  It  consists 
in  the  fact  that  there  are  found  in  the  rocks  series 
or  grades  of  structures,  which  fit  with  amazing 
accuracy  on  to  the  structures  of  existing  species. 
Now,  this  is  precisely  what,  according  to  the 
evolutional  hypothesis,  is  to  be  expected.  For,  if 
evolution  is  true,  existing  species  represent  the 
tops  of  things.  They  are  the  existing  and  visible 
parts  of  processes  which  extend  indefinitely  back 
into  the  past,  and  whose  deceased  stages  may 
reasonably  be  expected  to  be  found  fossil  in  the 
earth.  Considering  the  youth  and  inexperience 
of  paleontology  and  the  torn  and  incoherent 
character  of  the  record,  it  is  surprising  that  anat- 
omists have  been  able  to  accomplish  what  they 
have  accomplished.  In  many  cases — notably, 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  61 

those  of  man,  the  snail,  the  crocodile,  and  the 
horse — antecedent  forms  of  structure  have  been 
found  in  almost  unbroken  gradations  leading  back 
to  types  differing  immensely  from  their  existing 
representatives.  Bones  and  fossils  of  men  have 
been  found  buried  beneath  the  alluvium  of  rivers, 
under  old  lava-beds,  and  in  caves,  crusted  over  by 
the  deposits  of  percolating  waters.  Many  such 
fossils  are  found  in  quaternary  rocks,  along  with 
the  bones  of  animals  still  living  and  some  extinct. 
Some  of  these  remains  indicate  unmistakable 
affinities  with  the  ape.  The  most  celebrated  of 
these  discoveries  is  the  fossil  of  an  erect  ape-man 
(Pithecanthropus  erectus),  found  by  a  Dutch  Governor 
on  the  island  of  Java  in  1894.  This  fossil,  in  the 
shape  and  size  of  the  head  and  in  its  general  struc- 
ture, strikes  about  as  near  as  could  be  the  middle 
between  man  and  ape.  That  it  is  the  fossil  of  an 
ambiguous  fof  m  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that,  when 
it  was  examined  by  a  company  of  twelve  special- 
ists at  Berlin  soon  after  its  discovery,  three  of  them 
declared  it  to  be  the  remains  of  an  individual 
belonging  to  a  low  variety  of  man ;  three  others 
thought  it  was  a  large  anthropoid ;  while  the  other 
six  held  that  it  was  neither  man  nor  anthropoid, 
but  a  genuine  connecting  link  between  them.  It 
is  discussed  at  length  by  Haeckel  in  *  The  Last 
Link,'  a  paper  read  before  the  International  Con- 
gress of  Zoology,  at  Cambridge,  in  1898.  '  It  is,' 
says  the  veteran  biologist,  '  the  much  -  sought 
"  missing  link "  supposed  to  be  wanting  in  the 
chain  of  primates  which  stretches  unbroken  from 


6a  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

the  lowest  catarhine  to  the  most  highly  developed 
man.'  Associated  with  this  fossil  ape-man  were 
the  fossils  of  the  elephant,  hyena,  and  hippo- 
potamus, none  of  which  any  longer  exist  in  that 
part  of  the  world,  also  the  fossil  remains  of  two 
orders  of  animals  now  extinct.  The  genealogy  of 
the  crocodile  has  been  traced  by  Huxley,  through 
all  intermediate  stages,  back  to  the  giant  reptiles 
of  the  early  Tertiary.*  And  the  pedigree  of  the 
horse  has  been  even  more  completely  worked  out 
by  the  indefatigable  Marsh.  In  the  museum  of 
Yale  University  may  be  seen  the  fossil  history  of 
this  splendid  ungulate,  from  the  time  it  was  a 
clumsy  little  quadruped  only  14  inches  high,  and 
with  four  or  five  toes  on  each  foot,  down  to  existing 
horses.  The  earliest  known  ancestor  of  the  horse, 
the  eohippus,  lived  at  the  beginning  of  the  Eocene 
epoch.  It  had  five  toes,  almost  equal,  on  each 
front  foot  (four  toes  behind),  and  was  about  the 
size  of  a  fox.  The  orohippus,  which  lived  a  little 
later,  had  four  toes  on  each  front- foot,  and  three 
behind.  The  mesohippus,  found  in  the  Miocene, 
had  three  toes  and  one  rudimentary  toe  on  each 
front-foot,  and  three  toes  behind.  It  was  about 
the  size  of  a  sheep.  The  miohippus,  which  is 
found  later,  had  three  toes  on  each  of  its  four  feet, 
with  the  middle  toe  on  each  foot  larger  than  the 
other  two.  The  pliohippus,  living  in  the  Pliocene 
epoch,  had  one  principal  toe  on  each  foot,  and  two 
secondary  toes,  the  two  secondary  toes  not  reach- 
ing to  the  ground.  It  was  about  the  size  of  a 
*  See  table  of  geological  ages,  p.  79. 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  63 

donkey.  Existing  horses  have  one  toe  on  each 
foot — the  digit  corresponding  to  the  big  middle 
finger — and  the  ruins  of  two  others  in  the  form  of 
splints  on  the  back  of  each  ankle.  In  the  embryo 
of  the  horse  these  splints  are  segmented,  each  of 
them,  into  three  phalanges.  Fossil  remains  repre- 
senting all  stages  in  the  development  of  the  horse 
have  been  found  in  the  regions  about  the  upper 
waters  of  the  Missouri  River. 

It  is  an  important  fact  that  the  types  of  struc- 
ture forming  any  series  grow  more  and  more 
generalised  as  the  distance  from  the  present 
increases,  and  that  different  lines -of  development, 
when  traced  back  into  the  past,  often  converge  in 
types  which  combine  the  main  characters  of 
various  existing  groups.  The  horses,  rhinoceroses, 
and  tapirs,  great  as  are  the  differences  among 
them  now,  can  be  traced  back  step  by  step  through 
fossil  forms,  their  differences  gradually  becoming 
less  marked,  until  'the  lines  ultimately  blend 
together,  if  not  in  one  common  ancestor,  at  all 
events  into  forms  so  closely  alike  in  all  essentials 
that  no  reasonable  doubt  can  be  held  as  to  their 
common  origin.'  '  The  four  chief  orders  of  the  higher 
mammals — the  primates,  ungulates,  carnivora,  and 
rodents — seem  to  be  separated  by  profound  gulfs, 
when  we  confine  our  attention  to  the  representa- 
tives of  to-day.  But  these  gulfs  are  completely 
closed,  and  the  sharp  distinctions  of  the  four  orders 
are  entirely  lost,  when  we  go  back  and  compare 
their  extinct  predecessors  of  the  Cenozoic  period, 
who  lived  at  least  three  million  years  ago.  There 


64  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

we  find  the  great  sub-class  of  the  placentals,  which 
to-day  comprises  more  than  two  thousand  five 
hundred  species,  represented  by  only  a  small 
number  of  insignificant  pro-placentals,  in  which 
the  characters  of  the  four  divergent  orders  are  so 
intermingled  and  toned  down  that  we  cannot  in 
reason  do  other  than  consider  them  as  the  pre- 
cursors of  those  features.  The  oldest  primates, 
the  oldest  ungulates,  the  oldest  carnivora,  and  the 
oldest  rodents,  all  have  the  same  skeletal  structure 
and  the  same  typical  dentition  (forty-four  teeth) 
as  these  pro-placentals;  all  are  characterised  by 
the  small  and  imperfect  structure  of  the  brain, 
especially  of  the  cortex,  its  chief  part,  and  all 
have  short  legs  and  five-toed,  flat-soled  (planti- 
grade) feet.  In  many  cases  among  these  oldest 
placentals  it  was  at  first  very  difficult  to  say 
whether  they  should  be  classed  with  the  primates, 
ungulates,  carnivora,  or  rodents,  so  very  closely 
and  confusedly  do  these  four  groups,  which  diverge 
so  widely  afterwards,  approach  each  other  at  that 
time.  Their  common  origin  from  a  single  ances- 
tral group  follows  incontestably '  (5). 

9.  Man  is  the  most  powerful  and  influential  of 
animals.  He  rules  the  world — rules  it  with  a 
sovereignty  more  despotic  and  extensive  than  that 
hitherto  exercised  by  any  other  animal.  Many 
races  of  beings  are,  and  have  been  for  centuries, 
completely  dominated  by  him.  These  races, 
during  their  long  subjection,  have  been  changed 
and  transformed  by  man  in  a  wonderful  manner 
through  his  control  of  their  power  to  breed.  All 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  65 

domestic  animals  have  come  from  wild  animals ; 
they  have  been  derived  by  a  process  of  selective 
evolution  conducted  by  man  himself.  By  con- 
tinually choosing  as  the  progenitors  of  each 
generation  those  with  qualities  best  suited  to  his 
whims  and  purposes,  man  has  evolved  races  as 
different  from  each  other  in  appearance  and  struc- 
ture, and  as  different  from  the  original  species,  as 
many  groups  which,  in  the  wild  state,  constitute 
distinct  species ;  indeed,  man  has  in  some  cases 
created  entirely  new  species,  both  of  plants  and 
animals — species  that  breed  true  and  are  what 
biologists  call  '  good ' — by  his  own  selections. 

There  are  something  over  150  different  varieties 
of  the  domestic  pigeon.  Some  of  these  varieties — 
as  many  as  a  dozen,  Mr.  Darwin  thinks — differ 
from  each  other  sufficiently  to  be  reckoned,  if 
they  are  considered  solely  with  reference  to  their 
structures,  as  entirely  distinct  species.  The 
carrier,  for  instance,  the  giant  of  the  pigeons, 
measures  17  inches  from  bill-tip  to  the  end  of  its 
tail,  and  has  a  beak  if  inches  long.  Around  each 
eye  is  a  large  dahlia-like  wattle,  and  another  large 
wattle  is  on  the  beak,  giving  the  beak  the  appear- 
ance of  having  been  thrust  through  the  kernel  of 
a  walnut.  The  tumbler  is  small,  squatty,  and 
almost  beakless.  It  has  the  preposterous  habit 
of  rising  high  in  the  air  and  then  tumbling  heels 
over  head.  The  roller,  one  of  the  many  varieties 
of  the  tumbler,  descends  to  the  ground  in  a  series 
of  back  somersaults,  executed  so  rapidly  that  it 
looks  like  a  falling  ball.  The  runt  is  large,  weigh- 

5 


66  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

ing  sometimes  as  much  as  the  carrier.  The  fan- 
tail  has  thirty  or  forty  feathers  in  its  tail,  while  all 
other  varieties  have  only  twelve  or  fourteen,  the 
normal  number  for  birds.  The  trumpeter,  so 
named  on  account  of  its  peculiar  coo,  has  an 
umbrella-like  hood  of  feathers  covering  its  head 
and  face,  and  its  feet  are  so  heavily  feathered  that 
they  look  like  little  wings.  In  the  correct  speci- 
mens of  this  variety  the  feathers  have  to  be  clipped 
from  the  face  before  the  birds  can  see  to  feed 
themselves.  The  pouter  has  the  absurd  habit  of 
inflating  its  gullet  to  a  prodigious  size,  and  the 
Jacobin  wears  a  gigantic  ruff.  The  homing  pigeon 
has  such  a  strong  attachment  for  its  cote  that  it 
will  travel  hundreds  of  miles,  sometimes  as  many 
as  1,400  miles,  in  order  to  reach  the  home  from 
which  it  has  been  separated.  But  it  is  not  simply 
in  their  colour,  size,  habits,  and  plumage,  that 
pigeons  vary.  There  are  corresponding  differences 
in  their  structures,  in  the  number  of  their  ribs  and 
vertebrae,  in  the  shape  and  size  of  the  skull,  in 
the  bones  of  the  face,  in  the  development  of  the 
breast-bone,  and  in  the  length  of  the  neck,  legs, 
and  bill.  Pigeons  also  differ  in  the  shape  and  size 
of  their  eggs,  and  in  their  dispositions  and  voice. 
'  There  is,'  says  Huxley  in  summing  up  his  dis- 
cussion of  the  great  variety  in  these  birds,  '  hardly 
a  particular  of  either  internal  econony  or  external 
shape  which  has  not  by  selective  breeding  been 
perpetuated  and  become  the  foundation  of  a  new 
race '  (n). 

All  of  the  150  different  varieties  of  domestic 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  67 

pigeons  have  been  evolved  by  human  selection 
during  the  past  three  or  four  thousand  years  from 
the  blue  rock-doves  which  to-day  inhabit  the  sea- 
coast  countries  of  Europe. 

What  is  true  of  pigeons  is  also  true  largely  oi 
most  of  the  other  races  associated  with  man — of 
cats,  cattle,  horses,  sheep,  swine,  goats,  fowls, 
and  the  like.  All  varieties  of  the  domestic 
chicken  —  the  clumsy  Cochin  with  its  feather- 
duster  legs,  the  tall  and  stately  Spanish,  the  great- 
crested  Minorca,  the  Dorking  with  its  matchlesi 
comb  and  wattle,  the  almost  combless  Polish,  the 
blue  Andalusian,  the  gigantic  Brahma,  the  tiny 
Bantam,  the  Wyandottes  in  all  colours  (black, 
white,  buff,  silver,  and  golden),  the  magnificent 
Plymouth  Rocks,  and  the  exceedingly  pugnacious 
Game-cock — these  and  dozens  of  other  varieties, 
all  flightless,  have  come  from  the  jungle-bird 
whose  morning  clarion  still  greets  Aurora  from 
the  wilds  of  distant  India.  The  dog  is  a  civilised 
wolf,  and  the  wild-boar  is  the  progenitor  of  the 
oleaginous  swine.  The  Merino  and  South  Down 
breeds  of  sheep  have  come  from  the  same  stock  in 
the  last  century  and  a  half.  In  1790  a  lamb  was 
born  on  the  farm  of  Seth  Wright  in  Massachusetts. 
It  had  a  long  body  and  short,  bowed  legs.  It  was 
noticed  that  this  lamb  could  not  follow  the  others 
over  the  fences.  The  owner  thought  it  would  be 
a  good  thing  if  all  his  sheep  were  like  it  So  he 
selected  it  to  breed  from.  Some  of  its  offspring 
were  like  it,  and  some  were  like  the  ordinary 
sheep.  By  continual  selection  of  those  with  long 

5— a 


58  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

bodies  and  short  legs  the  ancon  breed  of  sheep  was 
finally  produced.  In  1770  in  a  herd  of  Paraguay 
cattle  a  hornless  male  calf  appeared,  and  from 
this  individual  in  a  similar  way  came  the  stock  of 
Muleys.  The  occasional  appearance  of  horned 
calves  and  lambs  among  the  offspring  of  hornless 
breeds  of  cattle  and  sheep  are  examples  of  atavism 
indicating  the  presence  of  a  vestigial  tendency  to 
breed  true  to  their  horned  ancestors.  The  Hereford 
cattle  originated  as  a  distinct  variety  about  1769 
through  the  careful  selections  of  a  certain  English- 
man by  the  name  of  Tompkins.  All  domesticated 
quadrupeds,  except  the  elephant,  have  come  from 
wild  species  with  erect  ears,  the  ears  acting  as 
funnels  to  harvest  the  sound-waves.  But  there 
are  few  of  them  in  which  there  is  not  one  or  more 
varieties  with  drooping  ears — cats  in  China,  horses 
in  parts  of  Russia,  sheep  in  Italy,  cattle  in  India, 
and  pigs,  dogs,  and  rabbits  in  all  long-civilised 
lands.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  seeing  dogs  and 
pigs  with  pendent  ears  that  we  are  surprised  to 
know  there  are  varieties  with  erect  ears.  The 
goldfish  is  a  carp,  and  in  its  native  haunts  in  the 
waters  of  China  it  has  the  colour  of  the  carp.  The 
golden  hue  seen  in  the  occupants  of  our  aquaria 
has  been  given  to  this  fish  by  the  Chinese  through 
the  continual  selection  of  certain  kinds.  The 
goldfish,  almost  as  much  as  the  pigeon,  has  been 
the  sport  of  fanciers,  and  the  strangest  varieties 
have  resulted.  Some  have  outlandishly  long  fins, 
while  others  have  no  dorsal  fin  at  all.  Some  are 
streaked  and  splotched  with  gold  and  scarlet; 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  69 

others  are  pure  albinos.  One  of  the  most  monstrous 
varieties  has  a  three-lobed  tail-fin,  and  its  eye- 
balls, without  sockets,  are  on  the  outside  of  its 
head.  All  of  our  common  barnyard  fowls — 
turkeys,  ducks,  geese,  and  chickens — are  flight- 
less, but  the  varieties  from  which  the  domesticated 
forms  have  come  all  have  functional  wings,  two  of 
these  varieties  crossing  continents  in  their  annual 
migrations. 

Not  only  animals,  but  plants  also,  many  of 
them,  have  been  greatly  changed  by  man  in  his 
efforts  to  adapt  them  to  his  uses  as  food,  orna- 
mentation, and  the  like.  On  the  seaside  cliffs  of 
Chili  and  Peru  may  still  be  found  growing  the 
wild-potato — the  small,  tough,  bitter  ancestor  of 
the  mammoth  Burbank,  Peerless,  Early  Rose, 
and  the  nearly  two  hundred  other  varieties  of  this 
matchless  tuber  found  in  the  gardens  of  civilised 
man.  The  cabbage,  kale,  cauliflower,  and  kohl- 
rabi are  all  modifications  of  the  same  wild  species 
(Brassica  olc-facea),  the  cauliflower  being  the  de- 
veloped flower,  kohlrabi  the  stalk,  and  kale  and 
cabbage  the  leaves.  The  peach  and  the  almond, 
Darwin  thinks,  have  also  come  from  a  common 
ancestral  drupe,  the  peach  being  the  developed 
fruit,  and  the  almond  the  seed.  There  are  nearly 
900  different  varieties  of  apples,  varying  in  the 
most  wonderful  manner  in  size,  colour,  flavour, 
texture,  and  shape,  but  all  of  ihem  probably 
derived  from  the  little,  sour,  inedible  Asiatic  crab. 
The  many  times  '  double  '  roses  of  our  gardens 
have  come  from  the  five-petalled  wild-rose  of  the 


70  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

prairies.  The  cultivated  varieties  of  viburnum 
and  hydrangea  have  showy  corymbs  of  infertile 
flowers  only,  but  the  wild  forms  from  which  the 
domestic  varieties  have  been  derived  have  only 
a  single  marginal  row  of  showy  infertile  flowers 
surrounding  a  mass  of  inconspicuous  fertile  flowers. 
It  has  been  due  to  their  efforts  to  please  men  that 
bananas,  pineapples,  and  oranges  have  got  into 
the  habit  of  neglecting  to  produce  seeds.  There 
are  certain  species  of  grapes  that  are  seedless, 
also  seedless  sugar-cane,  and  a  seedless  apple  has 
just  been  announced  by  horticulturists.  The 
development  of  domesticated  plants  is  only  in  its 
infancy,  and  it  is  probably  impossible  even  for  the 
most  agile  imagination  to  dream  of  the  miracles 
the  horticulturist  is  destined  to  work  in  the  ages 
to  come.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
seedless  varieties  of  all  our  common  fruits  will 
ultimately  be  produced,  and  that  in  size,  flavour, 
nutrient  constituents,  and  appearance,  they  will  be 
developed  into  forms  utterly  different  from  exist- 
ing varieties.  Just  within  the  last  few  years  the 
U.S.  Department  of  Agriculture  has  developed  a 
cotton-plant  immune  to  the  bacterial  diseases 
of  the  soil,  which  had  completely  driven  the 
cotton-raising  industry  out  of  large  districts  of  the 
South.  The  cultivation  of  many  of  the  cereals 
has  gone  on  so  long,  and  has  proceeded  so  far, 
that  their  origin  is  lost  in  antiquity. 

Whether  or  not  it  is  possible  for  new  varieties 
and  species  to  be  evolved  is  a  question,  therefore, 
which  does  not  need  to  depend  for  reply  wholly 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  71 

upon  theory.  It  is  known  to  have  taken  place; 
and  the  process  by  which  the  different  varieties  of 
domestic  animals  and  plants  have  been  evolved — 
domestic  selection — is  not  different  in  principle 
from  the  process  of  natural  selection,  the  chief 
operation  by  which  life  in  general,  both  plant  and 
animal,  is  assumed  to  have  been  evolved. 

10.  There  are  other  reasons  for  a  belief  in 
organic  evolution,  but  the  last  one  I  shall  mention 
is  the  fact  that  the  theory  of  organic  evolution 
harmonises  with  the  known  tendencies  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole.  The  organic  kingdoms  of 
the  earth — animals  and  plants — are  as  truly  parts 
of  the  terrestrial  globe  as  the  inorganic  kingdom 
is;  and  as  such  they  share  in,  and  are  actuated 
by,  the  same  great  tendency  or  instinct  as  that 
which  actuates  the  whole.  Nine-tenths  of  the 
substance  of  all  animals  and  plants  is  oxygen, 
hydrogen,  carbon,  and  nitrogen — the  very  elements 
which  make  up  the  entire  ocean  and  air,  and 
enter  largely  into  the  composition  of  the  contin- 
ents. The  human  body,  which  has  essentially 
the  same  chemical  composition  as  the  bodies  of 
animals  in  general,  is  made  up  of  four  solids,  five 
gases,  and  seven  metals — in  all,  sixteen  elements 
of  the  something  like  seventy  which  constitute 
the  entire  planet.  '  In  the  past,  man  appeared  to 
be  a  creature  foreign  to  the  earth,  and  placed 
upon  it  as  a  transitory  inhabitant  by  some  incom- 
prehensible power.  The  more  perfect  insight  of 
the  present  day  sees  man  as  a  being  whose 
development  has  taken  place  in  accordance  with 


;a  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

the  same  laws  as  those  that  have  governed  the 
development  of  the  earth  and  its  entire  organisa- 
tion— a  being  not  put  upon  the  earth  accidentally 
by  an  arbitrary  act,  but  produced  in  harmony 
with  the  earth's  nature,  and  belonging  to  it  as  do 
the  flowers  and  the  fruits  to  the  tree  which  bears 
them.'  Animals  are  not  outside  of,  nor  distinct 
from,  the  universe,  as  one  might  suspect  who  has 
listened  much  to  the  recital  of  tradition  so  long 
accepted  as  science.  They  are  more  or  less 
detached  portions  of  the  planet  earth  which  move 
over  its  surfaces  and  through  its  fluids  and 
multiply,  but  which  in  their  phenomena  obey 
the  same  laws  of  chemistry  and  physics  as  those 
in  accordance  with  which  the  rest  of  the  uni- 
verse acts.  Animals  are  moulds  through  which 
digressing  matters  from  the  soil,  sea,  and  sky 
pass  on  rounds  of  eternal  itineracy. 

Now,  the  earth  as  a  planet  is  in  process  of 
evolution.  Not  many  things  are  more  certain 
than  this.  The  earth  has  come  out  of  fire.  It 
has  grown  to  be  what  it  is.  Its  mountains, 
valleys,  plains,  seas,  shores,  islands,  lakes,  rivers, 
and  continents — these  were  not  always  here. 
They  have  been  evolved.  Not  only  the  earth, 
but  the  entire  family  of  spheres  of  which  the 
earth  is  a  member — the  solar  system — are  all 
evolving.  Mr.  Spencer  never  did  anything  more 
profound  than  when  he  demonstrated  in  his  'Law 
and  Cause  of  Progress  '  the  universal  migration  of 
things  from  a  condition  of  homogeneity  toward  a 
condition  of  greater  and  greater  heterogeneity. 


ORGANIC  EVOLUTION  73 

The  whole  universe,  or  as  much  of  it  as  can  be 
examined  by  terrestrial  instruments,  has  probably 
evolved  out  of  the  same  primordial  matters.  The 
organic  part  of  the  earth  has  evolved,  therefore, 
and  is  destined  to  continue  to  evolve,  because  it 
is  a  part  of  a  whole  whose  habit  or  ambition  it  is 
to  evolve. 

The  evidence  is  overwhelming.  The  theory  of 
organic  evolution  is  sustained  by  a  mass  of  facts 
not  less  authoritative  and  convincing  than  that 
which  supports  the  Copernican  theory  of  the 
worlds.  Evolution  is,  in  fact,  a  doctrine  so 
apparent  that  it  only  needs  to  be  honestly  and 
intelligently  looked  into  to  be  accepted  unre- 
servedly. It  is,  indeed,  more  than  a  doctrine.  It 
is  a  known  fact.  It  is  a  necessary  effect  of  the 
conditions  known  to  exist  among  the  animals  and 
plants  of  the  earth.  If  beings  vary  among  them- 
selves generation  after  generation,  if  only  the 
fittest  of  each  generation  survive,  and  if  the  sur- 
vivors tend  to  transmit  to  their  offspring  the 
qualities  of  their  superiority  (and  the  animals  and 
plants  of  the  earth  are  known  to  do  continually 
all  of  these  things),  then  it  follows  with  mathe- 
matical certainty  that  evolution  is  going  on,  and 
that  it  will  continue  to  go  on  as  long  as  these 
conditions  continue.  It  is  inevitable.  It  could 
not  be  otherwise.  We  would  know  that  evolution 
were  going  on  among  organisms  where  these  con- 
ditions existed,  even  though  we  had  never  ob- 
served it. 

The  boldest  and  most  enthusiastic  opponents  oi 


74  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

evolution  have  always  been  those  with  the  least 
information  about  it.  But  the  evidence  is  accu- 
mulating so  rapidly,  and  is  being  drawn  up  in  such 
unanswerable  array,  that,  if  it  is  not  already  the 
case,  it  will  not  be  many  years  before  it  will  be  an 
intellectual  reproach  for  anyone  to  discredit,  or  to 
be  known  to  have  discredited,  this  splendid  and 
inspiring  revelation. 

X.  The  Genealogy  of  Animals. 

Life  originated  in  the  sea,  and  for  an  immense 
period  of  time  after  it  commenced  it  was  confined 
to  the  place  of  its  origin.  The  civilisations  of  the 
earth  were  for  many  millions  of  years  exclusively 
aquatic.  It  has,  indeed,  been  estimated  that  the 
time  required  by  the  life  process  in  getting  out  of 
the  water — that  is,  that  the  time  consumed  in 
elaborating  the  first  species  of  land  animals — was 
much  longer  than  the  time  which  has  elapsed 
since  then.  I  presume  that  during  a  large  part  of 
this  early  period  it  would  have  seemed  to  one 
living  at  that  time  extremely  doubtful  whether 
there  would  ever  be  on  the  earth  any  other  kinds 
of  life  than  the  aquatic.  And  if  those  who  to-day 
weave  the  fashionable  fabrics  of  human  philosophy, 
and  who  know  nothing  about  anything  outside  the 
thin  edge  of  the  present,  had  been  back  there, 
they  would  no  doubt  have  declared  confidently,  as 
they  looked  upon  the  naked  continents  and  tne 
uninhabited  air  and  the  sea  teeming  with  its 
peculiar  faunas,  that  life  upon  solids  or  in  gases, 
life  anywhere,  in  fact,  except  in  the  sea,  where  it 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS     75 

had  always  existed,  and  to  which  alone  it  was 
adapted,  was  absolutely,  and  would  be  forever, 
impossible;  and  that  feathered  fishes  and  fishes 
with  the  power  to  run  and  skip,  and  especially 
*  sharks '  competent  to  walk  on  one  end  and  jabber 
with  the  other,  were  unthinkable  nonsense.  Life 
originated  in  the  sea  for  the  same  reason  that  the 
first  of  the  series  of  so-called  '  civilisations '  which 
have  appeared  in  human  history  sprang  from  the 
alluvium  of  the  Euphrates  and  the  Nile,  because 
the  conditions  for  bringing  life  into  existence  were 
here  the  most  favourable.  The  atmosphere  was 
incompetent  to  perform  such  a  task  as  the  invent- 
ing of  protoplasm,  and  there  was  no  land  above  the 
oceans. 

The  first  forms  of  life  were  one-celled — simple, 
jelly-like  dots  of  almost  homogeneous  plasm — the 
protozoa.  These  primitive  organisms  were  the 
common  grandparents  of  all  beings.  From  them 
evolved,  through  infinite  travail  and  suffering,  all 
of  the  orders,  families,  species,  and  varieties  of 
animals  that  to-day  live  on  the  earth,  and  all 
those  that  have  in  the  past  lived  and  passed 
away.  By  the  multiplication  and  specialisation 
of  cells,  and  the  formation  of  cell  aggregates,  the 
sponges,  celenterates,  and  flat  worms  were  de- 
veloped from  the  protozoa.*  The  connecting  links 
between  the  one-celled  and  the  many-celled  animals 
consist  of  a  series  of  colonial  forms  of  increasing 
size  and  complexity,  some  of  which  may  be 
found  in  every  roadside  ditch  and  pool,  while 

*  See  '  Genealogy  of  Animals,'  p.  331. 


76  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

others  are  extinct.  The  development  of  these 
many-celled  organisms  (metazoa)  from  one-celled 
organisms  was  a  perfectly  natural  process,  a 
process  which  takes  place  in  the  initial  evolutions 
of  every  embryo.  There  is  no  more  mystery 
about  it  than  there  is  about  any  other  act  of 
association.  All  association  is  simply  a  matter  of 
'  business.'  Many-celled  organisms  are  colonies, 
or  societies,  of  more  or  less  closely  co-operating 
one-celled  organisms,  and  they  have  come  into 
existence  in  obedience  to  the  same  laws  of  economy 
and  advantage  as  have  those  more  modern  societies 
of  metazoa  known  as  nations,  communities,  and 
states,  the  organised  bodies  of  men,  ants,  and 
millionaires. 

The  sponges  are  the  lowest  of  the  many-celled 
animals.  They  consist  of  irregular  masses  of 
loosely  associated  cells,  hopelessly  anchored  to 
the  sea-floor.  They  represent  the  social  instinct 
in  embryo.  The  cells  are  but  slightly  specialised, 
and  each  cell  leads  a  more  or  less  independent 
existence.  The  sponge  stands  at  about  that  stage 
of  social  integration  and  intelligence  represented 
by  those  stupendous  porifera  which  cover  conti- 
nents and  constitute  the  '  social  organisms '  of  the 
civilised  world.  The  nutritive  system  of  sponges 
consists  of  countless  pores  opening  from  the  sur- 
face into  a  common  canal  within,  through  which 
ever-waving  cilia  urge  the  alimental  waters.  In 
the  celenterates  the  cells  arrange  themselves  in 
the  form  of  a  cup  with  one  large  opening  into  and 
from  the  vase-like  stomach.  The  unsegmented 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS     77 

worms  are  flat  and  sac-like,  with  bilateral  sym- 
metry and  the  power  to  move  about,  but  not 
tubular,  as  are  the  true  worms.  They  are  blood- 
less, like  the  celenterates  and  sponges. 

From  the  flat  worms  developed  the  annelid 
worms,  animals  perforated  by  a  food  canal  and 
possessing  a  body  cavity  filled  with  blood  sur- 
rounding this  canal.  The  body  cavity  is  the  space 
between  the  walls  of  the  body  and  the  alimentary 
canal,  the  cavity  which  in  the  higher  animals 
contains  the  heart,  liver,  lungs,  kidneys,  etc.  The 
-vorms  and  all  animals  above  them  have  this 
cavity.  The  worms  and  all  animals  above  them 
also  have,  as  an  inheritance  from  the  flat  worms, 
bodies  with  bilateral  symmetry — that  is,  bodies 
with  two  halves  similar.  This  peculiarity  was 
probably  acquired  by  the  flat  worms,  and  so 
fastened  upon  all  subsequently  evolved  species,  as 
a  result  of  pure  carelessness.  It  probably  arose 
out  of  the  habit  of  using  continually,  or  over  and 
over  again,  the  same  parts  of  the  body  as  fore  and 
aft.  It  has  been  facetiously  said  that  if  it  had  not 
been  for  this  habit,  so  inadvertently  acquired  by 
these  humble  beings  so  long,  long  ago,  we  would 
not  to-day  be  able  to  tell  our  right  hand  from  our 
left.  In  the  worm  is  found  the  beginning  of 
that  wonderful  organ  of  co-ordination,  the  brain. 
The  brain  is  a  modification  of  the  skin.  It  may 
weaken  our  regard  for  this  imperial  organ  to  know 
that  it  is,  in  its  morphology,  akin  to  nails  and 
corns.  But  it  will  certainly  add  to  our  admiration 
for  the  infinite  labours  of  evolution  to  remember 


78  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

that  the  magnificent  thinking  apparatus  of  modern 
philosophers  was  originally  a  small  sensitive  plate 
developed  down  in  the  sea  a  hundred  million  years 
ago  on  the  dorsal  wall  of  the  mouths  of  primeval 
worms. 

From  the  worms  developed  all  of  the  highest 
four  phyla  of  the  animal  kingdom — the  echino- 
derms,  the  mollusks,  the  arthropods,  and  the 
chordate  animals,  the  last  of  which  were  the 
progenitors  of  the  illustrious  vertebrates.  The 
lowest  of  the  mollusks  are  the  snails,  and  from 
these  humble  tenants  of  our  ponds  and  shores 
sprang  the  headless  bivalves  and  the  giant  jawed 
cuttles.  The  mollusks  were  for  a  long  time  after 
their  development  the  mailed  monarchs  of  the 
sea,  and  shared  with  the  worms  the  dominion  of 
the  primordial  waters.  But  after  the  development 
of  the  more  active  arthropods,  especially  the 
crustaceans,  the  less  agile  worms  and  mollusks 
rapidly  declined.  Existing  worms  and  mollusks 
are  remnants  of  once  powerful  and  populous 
races. 

From  the  worms  also  developed  the  arthropods, 
the  water-breathing  crustaceans  and  the  air- 
breathing  spiders  and  insects.  The  crustaceans 
came  early,  away  back  in  the  gray  of  the  Silurian 
period,  just  about  the  time  North  America  was 
born.  North  America  lay,  a  naked,  V-shaped 
infant,  in  the  regions  of  Labrador  and  Canada. 
The  crustaceans  rapidly  superseded  the  mollusks 
as  rulers  of  the  sea,  attaining,  in  extreme  species, 
a  length  of  four  or  five  feet.  The  spiders  and 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      79 

insects  came  into  existence  toward  the  latter  part 
of  the  Silurian  period,*  probably  contemporaneous, 
or  nearly  so,  with  the  appearance  of  land  vegeta- 
tion. The  spiders  and  insects  were  the  aborigines 
of  the  land  and  air.  They  are  the  only  races  of 
living  beings,  except  the  original  inhabitants  of 
the  sea,  who  ever  invaded  and  settled  an  unoccu- 
pied world.  The  earliest  land  fossils  so  far  found 
are  the  fossils  of  scorpions.  But  the  existence  of 
a  sting  among  the  structural  possessions  of  these 
animals  indicates  that  there  were  already  others 
who  contended  with  them  for  supremacy  in  the 
new  world.  The  first  insects  were  the  masticating 
insects,  insects  such  as  cockroaches,  crickets,  grass- 
hoppers, dragon-flies,  and  beetles.  They  are  found 
abundantly  in  the  Devonian  and  Carboniferous 
rocks.  The  licking  insects  (bees)  and  the  pricking 
insects  (flies  and  bugs)  appeared  first  in  the 

*  The  following  are  the  divisions    and  subdivisions  of 
geological  history : 

'Pleistocene  period. 
Pliocene 


5.  Cenozoic  Era  (Tertiary) 


Miocene 


Oligocene        „ 
V-Eocene  „ 

I"  Cretaceous  period. 

4.  Mesozoic  Era  (Secondary)  •    j  Jurassic  „ 

ITriassic  „ 

Permian  period. 

Carboniferous  period. 

Devonian 


3.  Paleozoic  Era  (Primary) 


Silurian 


Ordovician  „ 

Cambrian  „ 

2.  Proterozoic  Era  ...       Algonkian  period. 

I.  Archeozoic  Era. 


So  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

Mesozoic  Era,  and  the  sipping  insects  (butter- 
flies) in  the  Cenozoic.  The  flower-loving  insects 
(the  bees  and  butterflies)  came  into  the  world  at 
the  same  time  as  did  the  flowers.  The  wings  of 
insects  may  be  modifications  of  the  gills  used  by 
insect  young  in  respiration  during  their  aquatic 
existence.  They  are,  hence,  very  different  in 
origin  from  the  wings  of  birds,  which  are  the 
modified  fore-legs  of  reptiles. 

The  most  important  class  of  animals  arising  out 
of  the  worms,  on  account  of  their  distinguished 
offspring,  were  the  hypothetical  cord  animals. 
The  only  existing  species  allied  to  these  animals 
is  the  amphioxus,  a  strange,  unpromising-looking 
creature,  half  worm  and  half  fish,  found  in  the 
beach  sands  of  many  seas.  It  has  white  blood  and 
a  tubular  heart.  It  is  without  either  head  or 
limbs,  and  looks  very  much  like  a  long  semi- 
transparent  leaf,  tapering  at  both  ends.  But  it 
has  two  unmistakable  prophecies  of  the  vertebrate 
anatomy:  a  cartilaginous  rod,  pointed  at  both 
ends,  extending  along  the  back,  and  above  this, 
and  parallel  to  it,  a  cord  of  nerve  matter.  These 
are  the  same  positions  occupied  by  the  spinal 
column  and  spinal  cord  in  all  true  vertebrates. 
That  the  amphioxus  is  a  genuine  relative  of  the 
ancestor  of  the  vertebrates  is  also  shown  by  the 
fact  that  these  simple  forms  of  column  and  cord 
possessed  by  amphioxus  are  precisely  the  forms 
assumed  by  the  spinal  column  and  spinal  cord  in 
the  embryos  of  all  vertebrates,  including  man. 

From  these  quasi-vertebrates  developed  the  fishes 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS     81 

— first  (after  the  scaleless,  limbless  lampreys)  the 
sharks  with  spiny  scales  and  cartilaginous  skeleton, 
and  after  these  the  lung  fishes  and  the  bony  fishes, 
with  flat,  horny  scales  and  skeletons  of  bone. 
From  the  beginning  of  the  Devonian  age,  when 
fishes  first  came  into  prominence,  till  the  rise  of 
the  great  reptiles  in  the  Triassic  time,  fishes  were 
the  dominant  life  of  the  sea.  In  the  fishes  first 
appeared  jaws,  a  sympathetic  nervous  system,  red 
blood,  backbone,  and  the  characteristic  two  pairs 
of  limbs  of  vertebrates. 

The  lung  fishes  (Dipneusta),  a  small  order  of 
strange  salamander-like  creatures  which  live  in- 
geniously on  the  borderland  between  the  liquid 
and  the  land,  may  be  looked  upon  as  physiological, 
if  not  morphological,  links  between  the  fishes  and 
the  frogs.  They  combine  the  characters  of  both 
fishes  and  frogs,  and  zoologists  have  been  tempted 
to  make  a  separate  class  of  them,  and  place  them 
between  the  two  classes  to  which  they  are  related. 
They  are  like  fishes  in  having  scales,  fins,  per- 
manent gills,  and  a  fish-like  shape  and  skeleton. 
They  resemble  frogs  in  having  lungs,  nostrils,  an 
incipiently  three-chambered  heart,  a  pulmonary 
circulation,  and  frog-like  skin  glands.  There  are 
three  genera  with  several  species.  One  genus 
(Neoceratodus)  is  found  in  two  or  three  small 
rivers  of  Queensland,  Australia ;  another  (Protop- 
terus)  lives  in  the  Gambia  and  other  rivers  of 
Africa;  and  the  third  (Lepidosiren)  inhabits  the 
swamps  of  the  Amazon  region.  They  all  breathe 
ordinarily  by  means  of  gills,  like  true  fishes,  but 

6 


82  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

have  the  habit  of  coming  frequently  to  the  surface 
and  inhaling  air.  The  air-bladder  acts  as  an 
incipient  lung  in  supplementing  respiration  by  gills. 
They  all  live  in  regions  where  a  dry  season  regularly 
converts  the  watercourses  into  beds  of  sand  and 
mud.  During  the  season  of  drought  these  strange 
animals  build  for  themselves  a  cocoon  or  nest  of 
mud  and  leaves.  This  cocoon  is  lined  with  mucus, 
and  provided  with  a  lid  through  which  air  is 
admitted.  Here  they  lie  in  this  capsule  through- 
out the  hot  southern  summer,  from  August  to 
December,  breathing  air  by  means  of  their  lungs 
and  living  upon  the  stored-up  fat  of  their  tails, 
until  the  return  of  the  wet  season,  when  they 
again  live  in  the  rivers  and  breathe  water  in  true 
piscatorial  fashion.  These  capsules  have  often 
been  carried  to  Europe,  and  opened  3,000  miles 
from  their  place  of  construction  without  harming 
the  life  within. 

Here,  in  these  eccentric  denizens  of  the  southern 
world,  we  find  the  beginnings  of  a  grand  trans- 
formation— a  transformation  in  both  structure  and 
function,  a  transformation  made  necessary  by  the 
transition  from  life  in  the  water  to  life  in  the  air, 
a  transformation  which  reaches  its  maturity  in  the 
higher  air-breathing  vertebrates,  where  the  simple 
air-sac  of  the  fish  becomes  a  pair  of  lobed  and 
elaborately  sacculated  lungs,  performing  almost 
exclusively  the  function  of  respiration,  and  the 
gills  change  into  parts  of  the  ears  and  lower  jaw. 

The  air-bladder  of  ordinary  fishes,  which  is  used 
chiefly  as  a  hydrostatic  organ  to  enable  the  fish 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS     83 

to  rise  and  fall  in  the  water,  is  probably  the 
degenerated  lung  of  the  lung  fishes. 

From  the  lung  fishes  or  allied  forms  developed 
the  amphibians,  the  well-known  fish  quadrupeds 
of  our  bogs  and  brooks.  The  amphibians  are 
genuine  connectives — living  links  between  the  life 
of  the  sea  and  the  life  of  the  land.  In  early  life 
they  are  fishes,  with  gills  and  two-chambered 
hearts.  In  later  life  they  are  air-breathing  quad- 
rupeds, with  legs  and  lungs  and  three-chambered 
hearts.  Here  is  evolution,  plenty  of  it,  and  of  the 
most  tangible  character.  And  it  takes  place  right 
before  the  eyes.  The  transformation  from  the  fish 
to  the  frog  is,  however,  no  more  wonderful  than 
the  embryonic  transformations  of  other  vertebrates. 
It  is  simply  more  apparent,  because  it  can  be 
seen.  The  lungs  of  amphibians  and  the  lower 
reptiles  are  simple  sacks  opening  by  a  very  short 
passage  into  the  mouth.  Some  amphibians,  as  the 
axolotl  of  Mexican  lakes,  ordinarily  retain  their 
gills  through  life,  but  may  be  induced  to  develop 
lungs  and  adapt  themselves  to  terrestrial  life  by 
being  kept  out  of  the  water.  Others,  as  the  newts, 
which  ordinarily  develop  lungs,  may  be  compelled 
to  retain  their  gills  through  life  by  being  forced  to 
remain  uninterruptedly  in  the  water.  The  black 
salamander,  inhabiting  droughty  regions  of  the 
Alps,  brings  forth  its  young  bearing  lungs,  and 
only  a  pair  at  a  time.  But  if  the  young  are  pre- 
maturely removed  from  the  body  of  the  mother 
and  placed  in  the  water,  they  develop  gills  in  the 
ordinary  way.  These  are  remarkable  instances  of 

6— a 


84  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

elasticity  in  the  presence  of  a  varying  environ- 
ment. 

In  the  amphibians  the  characteristic  five-toed  or 
five-fingered  foot,  which  normally  forms  the  ex- 
tremities of  the  limbs  of  all  vertebrates  except 
fishes,  is  first  met  with.  It  was  this  pentadactyl 
peculiarity  of  the  frog,  inherited  by  men  and  women 
through  the  reptiles  and  mammals,  that  gave  rise 
to  the  decimal  system  of  numbers  and  other  un- 
handy facts  in  human  life.  The  decimal  system 
arose  out  of  the  practice  of  early  men  performing 
their  calculations  on  their  fingers.  This  method 
of  calculating  is  still  used  by  primitive  peoples  all 
over  the  world.  The  sum  of  the  digits  of  the  two 
hands  came,  in  the  course  of  arithmetical  evolu- 
tion, to  be  used  as  a  unit,  and  from  this  simple 
beginning  grew  up  the  complicated  system  of  tens 
found  among  civilised  peoples.  It  has  all  come 
about  as  a  result  of  amphibian  initiative.  Our 
very  arithmetics  have  been  predetermined  by  the 
anatomical  peculiarities  of  the  frog's  foot.  If  these 
unthinking  foreordainers  of  human  affairs  had  had 
four  or  six  toes  on  each  foot  instead  of  five,  man 
would  no  doubt  have  inherited  them  just  as  cheer- 
fully as  the  number  he  did  inherit,  and  the  civilised 
world  would  in  this  case  be  to-day  using  in  all  of 
its  mathematical  activities  a  system  of  eights  or 
twelves  instead  of  a  system  of  tens.  A  system 
of  eights  or  twelves  would  be  much  superior  in 
flexibility  to  the  existing  system ;  for  eight  is 
a  cube,  and  its  half  and  double  are  squares; 
and  twelve  can  be  divided  by  two,  three,  four, 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      85 

and  six,  while  ten  is  divisible  by  two  and  five 
only. 

How  helpless  human  beings  are — in  fact,  how 
helpless  all  beings  are !  How  hopelessly  dependent 
we  are  upon  the  past,  and  how  impossible  it  is  to 
be  really  original !  What  the  future  will  be  depends 
upon  what  the  present  is,  for  the  future  will  grow 
out  of,  and  inherit,  the  present.  What  the  present 
is  depends  upon  what  the  past  was,  for  the  present 
has  grown  out  of,  and  inherited,  the  past.  And 
what  the  past  was  depends  upon  a  remoter  past 
from  which  it  evolved,  and  so  on.  There  is  no 
end  anywhere  of  dependence,  either  forward  or 
backward.  Every  fact,  from  an  idea  to  a  sun,  is 
a  contingent  link  in  an  eternal  chain. 

From  the  amphibians  (probably  from  extinct 
forms,  not  from  living)  there  arose  the  highest 
three  classes  of  vertebrates — the  true  reptiles,  the 
birds,  and  the  mammals — all  of  whom  have  lungs 
and  breathe  air  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
their  days.  Gills,  as  organs  of  breathing,  disappear 
forever,  being  changed,  as  has  been  said,  into 
parts  of  the  organs  of  mastication  and  hearing.  In 
the  reptiles  first  appear  those  organs  which  in  the 
highest  races  overflow  on  occasions  of  tenderness 
and  grief,  the  tear  glands.  These  organs  are, 
however,  in  our  cold-blooded  antecedents,  organs 
of  ocular  lubrication  rather  than  of  weeping. 
There  are  but  four  small  orders  of  existing  reptiles 
— snakes,  turtles,  lizards,  and  crocodilians.  These 
are  the  pygmean  descendants  of  a  mighty  line,  the 
last  of  a  dynasty  which  during  the  greater  part  of 


86  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

the  Mesozoic  ages  was  represented  by  the  most 
immense  and  powerful  monsters  that  have  ever 
lived  upon  the  earth.  Mesozoic  civilisation  was 
pre-eminently  saurian.  Reptiles  were  supreme 
everywhere — on  sea  and  land  and  in  the  air.  Their 
rulership  of  the  world  was  not  so  bloody  and 
masterful  as  man's,  but  quite  as  remorseless. 
Imagine  an  aristocracy  made  up  of  pterosaurs 
(flying  reptiles),  with  teeth,  and  measuring  20  feet 
between  wing  -  tips  ;  great  plesiosaurs  (serpent 
reptiles)  and  ichthyosaurs  (fish  reptiles),  enormous 
bandits  of  the  seas;  and  dinosaurs  and  atlanto- 
saurs,  giant  land  lizards,  30  feet  high  and  from 
50  to  100  feet  in  length.  A  government  of  demagogs 
is  bad  enough,  as  king-ridden  mankind  well  know, 
but  dragons  would  be  worse,  if  possible.  The 
atlantosaurs  were  the  largest  animals  that  have 
ever  walked  upon  the  earth.  They  were  huge 
plant-eaters  inhabiting  North  America.  It  has 
been  surmised  that  one  of  these  behemoths  '  may 
have  consumed  a  whole  tree  for  breakfast.'  It  was 
the  mighty  saurians  of  the  Mesozoic  time  who 
brought  into  everlasting  subordination  the  pisca- 
torial civilisation  of  the  Devonian  and  carboniferous 
ages. 

Toward  the  latter  part  of  the  Reptilian  Age, 
and  somewhere  along  about  the  time  of  the  ap- 
pearance of  hard-wood  forests,  came  the  birds, 
those  beautiful  and  emotional  beings  who,  in  spite 
of  human  destructiveness,  continue  to  fill  our 
groves  and  gardens  with  the  miracles  of  beauty 
and  song.  The  bird  is  a  '  glorified  reptile.'  How 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      87 

the  '  slow,  cold-blooded,  scaly  saurian  ever  became 
transformed  into  the  quick,  hot-blooded,  feathered 
bird,  the  joy  of  creation,'  is  a  considerable  mys- 
tery, yet  we  know  no  reason  for  believing  that  the 
transformation  did  not  take  place.  Although  in 
their  external  appearance  and  mode  of  life  birds 
and  reptiles  differ  so  widely  from  each  other,  yet, 
in  their  internal  structure  and  embryology,  they 
are  so  much  alike  that  one  of  the  brightest 
anatomists  that  has  ever  lived  (Huxley)  united 
them  both  into  a  single  class  under  the  name 
Sauropsida.  It  might  naturally  be  supposed  that 
the  birds  are  descendants  of  the  flying  reptiles, 
the  pterosaurs.  But  this  may  not  be  true.  The 
pterosaurs  were  structurally  much  further  removed 
from  the  birds  than  were  certain  extinct  terrestrial 
reptiles.  The  fact  that  birds  and  pterosaurs  both 
had  wings  has  really  nothing  to  do  with  the  case. 
For  the  wings  of  reptiles,  we  almost  know,  were 
not  homologous  with  the  wings  of  birds.  The 
bird's  wing  is  a  feathered  fore-leg ;  the  wing  of  the 
reptile  was  an  expanded  skin  stretching  from  the 
much-elongated  last  finger  backwards  to  the  hind- 
leg  and  tail.  Wings,  it  may  be  remarked  in 
passing,  have  had  at  least  four  different  and 
distinct  beginnings  in  the  animal  kingdom,  repre- 
sented by  the  bats,  the  birds,  the  reptiles,  and  the 
insects.  This  does  not  include  the  parachutes 
of  the  so-called  flying  squirrels,  lemurs,  lizards, 
phalangers,  and  fishes. 

The  first  birds  had  teeth  and  vertebrated  tails. 
The  archeopteryx,  which  is  the  earliest  toothed 


S8  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

bird  whose  remains  have  yet  been  found,  was 
about  the  size  of  a  crow.  It  had  thirty-two  teeth 
and  twenty  caudal  vertebrae.  Two  specimens 
of  it  have  been  found  in  the  Jurassic  slates  oi 
Bavaria.  One  of  these  fossils  is  in  the  British 
Museum,  and  the  other  in  the  Museum  of  Berlin. 
Other  toothed  birds  have  been  found  fossil  by 
Dr.  Mudge  in  the  cretaceous  chalk  of  North 
America.  These  last  had  short,  fan  tails  like 
existing  birds. 

From  the  toothed  birds  developed  the  beaked 
birds — the  keel-breasted  birds  (the  group  to  which 
most  existing  birds  belong)  and  the  birds  with 
unkeeled  breasts,  i.e.,  the  ostrich-like  birds.  The 
ostrich-like  birds  are  runners.  They  have  rudi- 
mentary wings,  and  the  keel  of  the  breast-bone, 
which  in  the  keel-breasted  birds  acts  as  a  stay 
for  the  attachment  of  the  wing  muscles,  is  lacking. 
The  ostrich-like  birds  are  probably  degenerate 
flyers,  the  flying  apparatus  having  become  obsolete 
through  disuse.  The  feathers  of  birds  are  gene- 
rally supposed  to  be  the  modified  scales  of 
reptiles. 

The  most  .brilliant  offspring  of  the  reptiles  were 
the  mammals,  animals  capable  of  a  wider  distribu- 
tion over  the  face  of  the  earth  than  the  cold- 
blooded reptiles,  on  account  of  their  hair  and  their 
warm  blood.  Cold-blooded  animals  of  great  size 
are  able  to  inhabit  but  a  small  zone  of  the  existing 
earth's  surface — the  torrid  belt.  They  cannot 
house  themselves  during  the  seasons  of  cold,  as 
men  can ;  nor  escape  to  the  tropics  on  the  wings 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      89 

of  the  wind,  as  do  the  birds ;  nor  bury  themselves 
in  subaqueous  mud,  as  do  the  frogs,  snakes, 
and  crustaceans.  During  the  Mesozoic  period, 
when  cold  -  blooded  reptiles  of  gigantic  size 
flourished  over  a  wide  area  of  the  earth's  surface, 
the  planet  was  far  warmer  than  now.  Animals, 
therefore,  like  the  mammals  (or  birds),  capable  of 
maintaining  a  fixed  temperature  regardless  of  the 
thermal  fluctuations  of  the  surrounding  media, 
are  the  only  animals  of  large  size  and  power 
capable  of  uninterrupted  existence  over  the 
greater  part  of  the  surface  of  the  existing  earth. 
The  pre-eminent  life  of  the  Cenozoic  time  was 
mammalian.  But  the  decline  and  fall  of  the 
saurian  power  was  not  wholly  due  to  the  rise  of 
the  more  dynamic  mammals.  It  was  in  part  due, 
no  doubt,  to  adverse  conditions  of  climate,  and 
also  to  the  fact  that  mammals  and  birds  guard 
their  eggs,  and  saurians  do  not. 

The  lowest  of  the  mammals  are  the  monotremes, 
animals  which  blend  in  a  marvellous  manner  the 
characteristics  of  birds,  reptiles,  and  mammals. 
Only  two  families  of  these  old-fashioned  creatures 
are  left,  the  echidna  and  the  duck-bill  (ornitho- 
rhynchus),  both  of  them  found  on  or  near  that 
museum  of  biological  antiquities,  Australia.  They 
are  covered  with  hair  and  suckle  their  young  like 
other  mammals,  but  they  have  only  the  rudiments 
of  milk  glands,  and  they  lay  eggs  with  large  yolks 
from  a  cloaca,  like  the  reptiles  and  birds.  The 
duck-bill  hides  its  eggs  in  the  ground,  but  the 
echidna  hatches  its  eggs  in  a  small  external 


90  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

brooding  pouch,  periodically  developed  for  this 
purpose.  The  young  of  the  monotremes  feed  on 
the  oily  perspiration  which  exudes  from  the  body  of 
the  mother.  The  monotremes  first  appear  in  the 
fossiliferous  rocks  of  the  Triassic  Age. 

From  the  monotreme-like  mammals  developed 
the  marsupial  mammals,  animals  possessing  a 
purse-like  pouch  on  the  after  part  of  the  abdomen, 
in  which  they  carry  their  young.  The  young  of 
marsupials  are  born  in  an  extremely  immature 
state,  and  are  carried  in  this  pouch  in  order  to 
complete  their  development.  The  young  of  the 
kangaroo,  an  animal  as  large  as  a  man,  are  only 
about  an  inch  in  length  when  they  are  born. 
They  are  carried  for  nine  months  after  their  birth 
in  the  marsupium  of  the  mother,  firmly  attached 
to  the  maternal  nipple.  The  marsupials  came 
into  existence  during  the  Jurassic  Age,  and 
during  the  next  age,  the  Cretaceous,  they  arose 
to  considerable  power.  During  this  latter  age 
they  were  found  on  every  continent.  But  they 
have  been  almost  exterminated  by  their  more 
powerful  descendants. 

From  the  marsupials  developed  the  placental 
mammals,  animals  so  called  because  their  young 
are  developed  within  the  parental  body  in  associa- 
tion with  a  peculiar  nourishing  organ  called  the 
placenta.  From  the  herbivorous  marsupials  de- 
veloped the  almost  toothless  edentates,  the  rodents, 
or  gnawing  animals,  the  sirenians,  the  cetaceans, 
and  the  hoofed  animals,  or  ungulates.  The 
sirenians  are  fish-like  animals  with  two  flippers, 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      91 

and  are  often  called  sea-cows.  They  resemble 
whales  in  many  respects,  and  are  sometimes 
classed  with  them.  They  are  plant-eaters  ex- 
clusively, and  are  found  grazing  along  the  bottoms 
of  tropical  estuaries  and  rivers.  They  have  tiny 
eyes,  teeth  fitted  for  grinding  (not  spike-like  as  in 
the  whales),  and  a  strong  affection  for  their  young, 
the  mother,  when  pursued,  often  carrying  her  little 
one  under  her  flippers.  An  immense  sirenian, 
known  as  Steller's  manatee,  was  discovered  on 
the  Behring  Islands,  along  the  Kamschatka  coast, 
in  1741.  Twenty-seven  years  afterwards  not  one 
of  them  was  left,  all  having  been  murdered  by  the 
Russian  sailors.  The  sirenians  are  probably  de- 
generate forms  of  land  quadrupeds,  having  lost 
their  hind-limbs  and  developed  the  fish-like  shape 
in  adapting  themselves  to  aquatic  conditions. 
They  appear  first  in  the  Eocene  Age. 

Among  the  most  interesting  derivatives  of  the 
herbivorous  marsupials,  because  the  most  aberrant, 
are  the  whales.  They  are  true  mammals — have 
warm  blood,  breathe  the  air  with  lungs,  and  suckle 
their  young  like  other  mammals.  But,  like  the 
sirenians,  they  live  in  the  surface  of  the  waters, 
and  have  flippers  and  a  fish-like  tail  and  form. 
They  differ  from  the  sirenians,  however,  in  being 
carnivorous,  in  having  inguinal  instead  of  pectoral 
milk  glands,  and  in  being  structurally  less  like 
quadrupeds.  They  probably  degenerated  from 
land  quadrupeds  during  the  Jurassic  period,  and, 
owing  to  their  longer  residence  in  the  waters,  have 
become  further  removed  from  the  quadrupedal 


92  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

type  than  the  sirenians.  Whales  have  two  limbs, 
the  hind-limbs  having  disappeared  as  a  result  of 
the  pre-eminent  development  of  the  tail.  The 
tails  of  whales  and  sirenians  are  flattened  horizon- 
tally, not  vertically,  as  in  fishes. 

Out  of  generalised  forms  of  hoofed  animals  now 
extinct  developed  the  odd -toed  and  even -toed 
races  of  existing  ungulates.  The  original  ungu- 
lates had  five  hoofs  on  each  foot,  and  were  highly 
generalised  in  their  structure.  From  these  original 
five-toed  forms  have  arisen  the  variously  hoofed 
and  variously  structured  tribes  of  existing  ungu- 
lates :  the  five-toed  elephant,  the  four-toed  tapir 
and  hippopotamus,  the  three-toed  rhinoceros,  the 
two -toed  camel,  sheep,  swine,  deer,  antelope, 
giraffe,  and  ox,  and  the  one-toed  horse  and  zebra. 

The  carnivorous  branch  of  the  placental  animals 
came  from  the  carnivorous  branch  of  the  mar- 
supials. From  early  forms  of  carnivorous  pla- 
centals  developed  the  ape-like  lemurs  and  those 
generalised  forms  of  rapacious  animals  from  which 
arose  the  insect-eaters,  the  bats,  and  the  true 
carnivora.  The  seals  represent  a  by-development 
from  the  main  line  of  the  carnivora,  a  third  defec- 
tion, and  a  comparatively  recent  one,  from  land 
faunas.  Seals  live  at  the  meeting  of  the  land  and 
the  waters  rather  than  in  or  on  the  waters,  as  do 
the  cetaceans  and  sirenians.  They  have  retained 
their  fur  and  their  four  limbs,  but  have  almost  lost 
their  power  of  land  locomotion  by  the  conversion 
of  their  feet  into  flippers.  The  two  front-limbs  of 
seals  are  the  only  ones  used  as  ordinary  limbs  are 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS     93 

used.  The  hind-limbs  in  most  seals  stretch  per- 
manently out  behind,  the  webbed  digits  spreading 
out  fan-shaped  on  either  side  of  the  stumpy  tail, 
and  constituting  a  rowing  apparatus  functionally 
homologous  with  the  tail  of  fishes  and  whales. 
According  to  Jordan,  the  fur  seals  and  the  hair 
seals  are  descended  from  different  families  of  land 
carnivora,  the  former  probably  from  the  bears, 
and  the  latter  from  the  cats. 

The  lemurs  are  of  especial  interest  to  human 
beings,  because  in  them  are  found  the  first  startling 
approximation  in  looks  and  structure  to  the 
'human  form  divine.'  The  lemurs  are  monkey- 
like  creatures  living  in  trees,  but  differ  enough 
from  true  monkeys  to  be  often  placed  in  an  order 
by  themselves.  Their  milk  glands  are  abdominal 
instead  of  pectoral,  as  in  the  monkeys,  and  the 
second  digit  of  each  hand  and  foot  ends  in  a  claw. 
The  most  of  them  live  in  Madagascar.  They  are 
generally  nocturnal  in  their  habits,  although  some 
species  are  diurnal.  They  appear  first  in  the 
Eocene  rocks,  and  Haeckel  thinks  they  may  have 
developed  from  opossum-like  marsupials  in  the 
late  Cretaceous  or  early  Eocene  Age. 

From  lemurs  or  from  some  other  similar  sort  of 
semi-apes  developed  the  true  apes — the  flat-nosed 
(platyrhine)  apes  of  the  New  World  and  the 
narrow-nosed  (catarhine)  apes  of  the  Old  World. 
There  is  considerable  difference  between  the  New 
World  apes  and  those  of  the  Old  World.  The 
differences  between  the  two  classes  is,  in  fact,  so 
striking  that  they  are  thought  by  some  to  have 


94  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

developed  independently  of  each  other  from 
distinct  species  of  semi-apes.  The  apes  of  the 
New  World  have  flat  noses,  and  the  nostrils  are 
far  apart  and  open  in  front  of  the  nose,  never 
below.  The  Old  World  apes  have  narrow  noses, 
the  nostrils  being  close  together  and  opening 
downwards  as  in  man.  The  tail  of  (nearly)  all 
New  World  apes  is  prehensile,  being  used  regularly 
as  a  fifth  limb,  while  among  Old  World  apes  the 
tail  is  never  so  used.  The  Old  World  apes  all 
have  the  same  number  and  kinds  of  teeth  as  man 
has,  while  the  New  World  apes  (excepting  the 
Brazilian  marmosets)  have  an  additional  premolar 
in  each  half-jaw,  making  thirty-six  in  all.  The 
catarhine  apes  are,  therefore,  structurally  much 
nearer  to  man  than  their  platyrhine  cousins.  All 
tailed  apes  probably  sprang  originally  from  a 
single  stirp  of  semi-apes,  and  spread  over  the 
earth  at  a  time  when  the  eastern  and  western 
land  masses  of  the  southern  hemisphere  were  con- 
nected with  each  other.  The  earliest  remains  of 
apes  appear  in  the  Miocene  Age. 

From  the  Old  World  tailed  apes  were  developed 
the  tailless,  man-like,  or  anthropoid  apes — the 
gorillas  and  chimpanzees  of  Africa,  and  the  orangs 
and  gibbons  of  Asia  and  the  East  Indies.  The  an- 
thropoids arose  from  the  tailed  apes  by  the  loss  of 
the  tail,  the  thinning  of  the  hairy  covering,  the 
enlargement  of  the  fore- brain,  and  by  structural 
adaptations  to  a  more  nearly  vertical  position. 
No  remains  of  anthropoids  are  found  earlier  than 
the  Pliocene  Age. 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS     95 

The  man-like  apes  are  the  nearest  living  rela- 
tives of  the  human  races.  It  is  not  probable  that 
man  has  been  derived  directly  from  any  of  the  exist- 
ing races  of  man-like  apes.  For  no  one  of  them  in 
all  particulars  of  its  structure  stands  closer  to  him 
than  the  rest.  The  orang  approaches  closest  to 
man  in  the  formation  of  the  brain,  the  chimpanzee 
in  the  shape  of  the  spine  and  in  certain  character- 
istics of  the  skull,  the  gorilla  in  the  development 
of  the  feet  and  in  size,  and  the  gibbon  in  the 
formation  of  the  throat  and  teeth.  The  earliest 
human  races  probably  sprang  from  man-like  races 
of  apes  now  extinct,  who  lived  in  southern  Asia 
or  in  Africa  during  the  Pliocene  Age  (possibly  as 
early  as  the  Miocene),  and  who  combined  in  their 
structures  the  various  man-like  characters  pos- 
sessed by  existing  anthropoids. 

The  earliest  races  of  men  were  speechless — the 
ape-like  '  Alali ' — beings,  living  wholly  upon  the 
ground  and  walking  upon  their  hind-limbs,  but 
without  more  than  the  mere  rudiments  of  lan- 
guage. The  vertical  position  led  to  a  much 
greater  development  of  the  posterior  parts,  espe- 
cially of  the  muscles  of  the  back  and  the  calves 
of  the  leg.  The  great  toe,  which  in  the  ape  is 
opposable,  lost  its  opposability,  or  all  except  traces 
of  it,  after  the  abandonment  of  arboreal  life.  It 
must  have  been  a  sight  fit  to  stir  the  soul  of  the 
most  leathern,  these  children  of  the  night,  with 
low  brows,  stooping  gait,  and  ape-like  faces,  armed 
with  rude  clubs,  clothed  in  natural  hair,  and 
wandering  about  in  droves  without  law,  fire,  01 


96  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

understanding,  hiding  in  thickets  and  in  the  holes 
of  the  earth,  feeding  on  roots  and  fruits,  and  con- 
tending doubtfully  with  the  species  around  them 
for  food  and  existence. 

From  the  '  Alali ' — the  speechless  ape-men — we 
may  imagine  the  true  men  to  have  evolved — talk- 
ing men,  men  with  erect  posture  and  mature 
brain  and  larynx,  the  woolly-haired  ulotrichi  and 
the  straight-haired  lissotrichi.  There  are  four 
existing  species  of  woolly-haired  men  :  the  Papuans 
of  New  Guinea  and  Melanesia,  and  the  Hotten- 
tots, Caffres,  and  Negroes  of  southern,  equatorial, 
and  north  central  Africa  respectively.  They  all 
have  long  heads,  slanting  teeth,  very  dark  skin, 
and  black,  bushy  hair,  each  individual  hair  in 
cross-section  being  flat  or  oval  in  shape.  In  the 
straight-haired  races  the  skin  is  much  fairer  than 
in  the  woolly-haired  races,  being  seldom  darker  than 
brown,  and  each  individual  hair  in  cross-section  is 
round  like  the  cross-section  of  a  cylinder.  The 
principal  species  of  straight-haired  men  are  the 
sea-roving  Malays  of  the  East  Indies  and  the 
Pacific,  the  round-faced  Mongols  of  eastern  and 
northern  Asia,  the  aboriginal  Americans  of  the 
western  hemisphere,  and  the  incomparable  Aryans, 
including  the  ancient  Greeks  and  Romans  and  the 
modern  peoples  of  India,  Persia,  and  Europe. 

Man  is  to-day  the  pre-eminent  animal  of  the 
planet.  The  successive  ascendancies  of  the  Worm, 
the  Mollusk,  the  Crustacean,  the  Fish,  the  Reptile, 
and  the  Mammal,  are  followed  triumphantly  by 
the  ascendancy  of  the  Children  of  the  Ape. 


THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS     97 

A  large  part  of  the  life  of  the  earth  has 
remained  steadfastly  where  it  was  cradled,  beneath 
the  waves.  But  more  restless  portions  have  left 
the  sea  and  crept  forth  upon  the  land,  or  swarmed 
into  the  air.  One  migration,  the  most  numerous, 
is  represented  by  the  insects.  Another,  the  most 
enterprising,  was  the  amphibian.  After  ages  of 
evolution  the  amphibian  branch  divided.  One 
branch  acquired  wings  and  sailed  off  into  the  air. 
The  other  divided  and  subdivided.  One  of  these 
subdivisions  entered  the  forests,  climbed  and 
clambered  among  the  trees,  acquired  perpendicu- 
larity and  hands,  descended  and  walked  upon  the 
soil,  invented  agriculture,  built  cities  and  states, 
and  imagined  itself  immortal.  Human  society  is 
but  the  van — the  hither  terminus — of  an  evolu- 
tional process  which  had  its  beginning  away  back 
in  the  protoplasm  of  primeval  waters.  There  is 
not  a  form  that  creeps  beneath  the  sea  but  can 
claim  kinship  with  the  eagle.  The  philosopher  is 
the  remote  posterity  of  the  meek  and  lowly 
amoeba. 

XI.  Conclusion. 

The  resemblances,  homologies,  and  metamor- 
phoses existing  everywhere  among  animal  forms 
are,  therefore,  evidence  of  the  most  logical  con- 
sanguinities. It  is  all  so  perfectly  plain.  The 
structures  of  organic  beings  have  come  about  as  a 
result  of  the  action  and  reaction  of  environment 
upon  these  structures.  Every  being — and  not 
only  every  being,  but  every  species,  the  whole 

7 


98  THE  PHYSICAL  KINSHIP 

organic  world — has  come  to  be  what  it  is  as  a 
result  of  the  incessant  hammerings  of  its  surround- 
ings, the  hammerings  not  only  of  the  present,  but 
of  the  long-stretching  past.     By  surroundings  is 
meant,  of  course,  the  rest  of  the  universe.    Those 
animals  belonging  to  the  same  stock  resemble  each 
other  because  they  have  been   subjected  to  the 
same  experiences,  the  same  series  of  selections. 
They  have  lain  on  the  same  great  anvil,  and  felt 
the  down-comings  of  the  same  sledge.     The  simi- 
larities among  animal  forms  in  general  indicate 
relationships,  just  as  the  similarities  among  the 
races  of  men  indicate  racial  consanguinities.     All 
men  belong  to  the  human  species  because  they 
are  all  fundamentally  alike.     But  there  are  differ- 
ences in  the  character  of  the  hair,  in  the  colour  of 
the  skin,  in  the  conformation  of  the  skull,  and  in 
the  structure  of  the  language,  among  the  different 
varieties  of  the  species,  indicating  striking  variety 
in  relationship  and  origin.     An  eminent  biologist 
has   said  that   if  Negroes  and   Caucasians  were 
snails  they  would  be  classed  as  entirely  distinct 
species  of  animals.     Whether,  as  is  thought  by 
some,  the  woolly-haired  races  are  the  descendants 
of   the  African   anthropoids,   and    the    straight- 
haired  varieties   are  the  posterity  of  the  orangs 
and  gibbons,  we  may  never  know  positively.     But 
we  do  know  that   these  two  great   branches  of 
mankind  must  have  different  genealogies,  extend- 
ing to  a  remote  antiquity,  and  that  the  varieties 
belonging  to  each   great   group  sustain  to   each 
other  the  relations  of  a  common  kinship.    English- 


CONCLUSION  99 

men  look  like  each  other,  act  like  each  other,  and 
speak  the  same  language.  So  do  Frenchmen  and 
Swedes  and  Chinese.  Every  people  is  peculiar. 
This  is  not  the  result  of  accident  or  agreement, 
but  the  result  of  law.  Mongolians  do  not  all  have 
short  heads,  yellow  faces,  slanting  eyes,  and  promi- 
nent malars  because  they  have  agreed  to  have 
them,  but  as  a  result  of  a  common  pedigree. 
Similarity  of  structure  implies  commonalty  of 
origin,  and  commonalty  of  origin  means  consan- 
guinity. 

And  this  is  true  whether  you  contemplate  the 
featural  resemblances  of  brothers  and  sisters  of 
the  same  human  parent,  or  those  more  funda- 
mental characteristics  which  distinguish  species, 
orders,  and  sub-kingdoms.  All  animals  are  com- 
posed of  protoplasm,  which  is  a  compound  of 
clay,  because  all  animals  are  descended  from  the 
same  first  parents,  protoplasmic  organisms  evolved 
out  of  the  elemental  ooze.  All  vertebrates  have 
nerve- filled  backbones  with  two  pairs  of  ventrally 
branching  limbs,  because  the  original  ancestors  of 
the  vertebrates  had  nerve-filled  backbones  with 
two  pairs  of  ventrally  branching  limbs.  Insects 
individually  evolve  from  worms  because  worms 
are  their  phylogenetic  fathers  and  mothers.  Man 
has  hands  and  a  vertical  spine,  and  walks  on  his 
hind-limbs,  not  because  he  was  fashioned  in  the 
image  of  a  god,  but  because  his  ancestors  lived 
among  the  trees.  The  habit  of  using  the  posterior 
limbs  for  locomotion,  and  the  anterior  for  pre- 
hension, and  the  resulting  perpendicular,  are 

TRLL 


ioo       THE  PHYSJU:AL  KINSHIP 

peculiarities  developed  by  our  simian  ancestors 
wholly  on  account  of  the  incentives  to  such 
structure  and  posture  afforded  by  aboreal  life. 
These  peculiarities  would  not  likely  have  been 
acquired  by  quadrupeds  living  upon  and  taking 
their  food  from  a  perfectly  level  and  treeless  plain. 
If  there  had  been  no  forests  on  the  earth,  there- 
fore, there  would  have  been  no  incentive  to  the 
perpendicular,  and  the  '  human  form  divine '  would 
have  been  inconceivably  different  from  what  it  is 
to-day.  And  if  fishes  had  had  three  serial  pairs 
of  limbs  instead  of  two,  and  their  posterity  had 
inherited  them,  as  they  certainly  would  have  had 
the  foresight  to  do  if  they  had  had  the  opportunity, 
the  highest  animals  on  the  earth  to-day,  the 
'  paragons  of  creation,'  would  probably  be  two- 
handed  quadrupeds  (centaurs)  instead  of  two- 
handed  bipeds.  And  much  more  efficient  and 
ideal  individuals  they  would  have  been  in  every 
way  than  the  rickety,  peculiar,  unsubstantial 
plantigrades  who,  by  their  talent  to  talk,  have 
become  the  masters  of  the  universe,  and,  by  their 
imaginations,  '  divine.' 

Kinship  is  universal.  The  orders,  families, 
species,  and  races  of  the  animal  kingdom  are  the 
branches  of  a  gigantic  arbour.  Every  individual  is 
a  cell,  every  species  is  a  tissue,  and  every  order  is 
an  organ  in  the  great  surging,  suffering,  palpitat- 
ing process.  Man  is  simply  one  portion  of  the 
immense  enterprise.  He  is  as  veritably  an  animal 
as  the  insect  that  drinks  its  little  fill  from  his 
veins,  the  ox  he  goads,  or  the  wild-fox  that  flees 


CONCLUSION  101 

before  his  bellowings.     Man  is  not  a  god,  nor  in 
any  imminent  danger  of  becoming  one.     He  is  not 
a  celestial  star-babe  dropped  down  among  mundane 
matters  for  a  time  and  endowed  with  wing  possi- 
bilities  and  the   anatomy   of  a  deity.     He  is  a 
mammal  of  the  order  of  primates,  not  so  lament- 
able when  we  think  of  the  hyena  and  the  serpent, 
but  an  exceedingly  discouraging  vertebrate  com- 
pared with  what  he  ought  to  be.     He  has  come 
up   from    the  worm   and   the   quadruped.      His 
relatives  dwell  on  the  prairies  and  in  the  fields, 
forests,  and  waves.     He  shares  the  honours  and 
partakes  of  the  infirmities  of  all  his  kindred.     He 
walks  on   his  hind-limbs  like  the  ape ;    he  eats 
herbage  and  suckles  his  young   like  the  ox;    he 
slays  his  fellows  and  fills  himself  with  their  blood 
like  the  croccdile  and  the  tiger ;  he  grows  old  and 
dies,  and  turns  to  banqueting  worms,  like  all  that 
come  from  the  elemental  loins.     He  cannot  exceed 
the  winds  like  the  hound,  nor  dissolve  his  image 
in  the  mid-day  blue  like  the  eagle.     He  has  not  the 
courage  of  the  gorilla,  the   magnificence  of  the 
steed,  nor  the  plaintive  innocence  of  the  ring-dove. 
Poor,  pitiful,  glory-hunting  hideful !     Born  into  a 
universe  which  he  creates  when  he  comes  into  it, 
and  clinging,  like  all  his  kindred,  to  a  clod  that 
knows  him  not,  he  drives  on  in  the  preposterous 
storm  of  the  atoms,  as  helpless  to  fashion  his  fate 
as  the  sleet  that  pelts  him,  and  lost  absolutely  in 
the  somnambulism  of  his  own  being. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(1)  HARTMANN  :  Anthropoid  Apes  ;  New  York,  1901. 

(2)  QUATREFAGES  :    The    Human    Species ;    New  York, 

1898. 

(3)  TYLOR  :  Anthropology;  New  York,  1899. 

(4)  HAECKEL:  History  of  Creation,  2  vols.;  New  York, 

1896. 

(5)  HAECKEL  :  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe ;  New  York, 

1901. 

(6)  HUXLEY  :  Man's  Place  in  Nature ;  New  York,  1883. 

(7)  JORDAN  :  Footnotes  of  Evolution  ;  New  York,  1898. 

(8)  DARWIN  :  Descent  of  Man,  2nd  edit.;  London,  1874. 

(9)  DRUMMOND  :  Ascent  of  Man  ;  New  York,  1894. 

(10)  THOMPSON  :  Outlines  of  Zoology,  3rd  edit ;  Edinburgh, 

1899. 

(11)  HUXLEY  :  On  the  Origin  of  Species,  lecture  iv. 


102 


THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

tAGB 

I.  THE  CONFLICT  OF  SCIENCE  AND  TRADITION        -  105 

II.   EVIDENCES  OF  PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION     -              -  IIO 

III.  THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW                -              -              -  146 

IV.  THE    ELEMENTS    OF     HUMAN    AND    NON-HUMAN 

MIND  COMPARED                 ....  196 

V.  CONCLUSION                -              -            •-"'            -,            -  232 


10$ 


I  SAW,  deep  in  the  eyes  of  the  animals,  the  human  soul 
ook  out  upon  me. 

'  I  saw  where  it  was  born  down  deep  under  feathers  and 
far,  or  condemned  for  awhile  to  roam  four-footed  among  the 
brambles.  I  caught  the  clinging  mute  glance  of  the  prisoner, 
and  swore  that  I  would  be  faithful. 

'  Thee,  my  brother  and  sister,  I  see  and  mistake  not  Do 
not  be  afraid.  Dwelling  thus  and  thus  for  awhile,  fulfilling 
thy  appointed  time — thou  too  shalt  come  to  thyself  at  last. 

1  Thy  half-warm  horns  and  long  tongue  lapping  round  my 
wrist  do  not  conceal  thy  humanity  any  more  than  the  learned 
talk  of  the  pedant  conceals  his — for  all  thou  art  dumb  we 
have  words  and  plenty  between  us.' — EDWARD  CARPENTER. 


THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

I.  The  Conflict  of  Science  and  Tradition. 

THE  doctrine  that  on  mankind's  account  all  other 
beings  came  into  existence,  and  that  non-human 
beings  are  mere  hunks  of  matter  devoid  of  all 
psychic  qualities  found  in  man,  is  a  doctrine 
about  as  sagacious  as  the  old  geocentric  theory 
of  the  universe.  Conceit  is  a  distinctly  human 
emotion.  No  other  animal  has  it.  But  it  has 
been  lavished  upon  man  with  a  generosity  suffi- 
cient to  compensate  for  its  total  absence  from  the 
rest  of  the  universe.  Man  has  always  overesti- 
mated himself.  In  whatever  age  or  province  of 
the  world  you  look  down  on  the  human  imagina- 
tion, you  find  it  industriously  digging  disparities 
and  establishing  gulfs.  Man,  according  to  him- 
self, has  had  great  difficulty  many  times  in  the 
history  of  the  world  in  escaping  the  divine.  Ac- 
cording to  the  facts,  he  has  only  in  recent  bio- 
logical times  and  after  great  labour  and  uncertainty 
abandoned  his  tail  and  his  all- fours.  According 
to  himself,  man  was  made  '  in  the  image  of  his 
maker/  and  has  been  endowed  with  powers  and 
105 


io6         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

properties  peculiarly  his  own.  According  to  the 
facts,  he  has  come  into  the  world  in  a  manner 
identical  with  that  of  all  other  animals,  and  has 
been  endowed  with  like  nature  and  destiny.  Man 
has  never  manifested  a  warmer  or  more  indelicate 
enthusiasm  than  the  enthusiasm  with  which  he 
has  appreciated  himself.  And  with  the  same 
ardour  with  which  he  has  praised  himself  he  has 
maligned  and  misrepresented  others.  Man  has 
set  himself  up  as  the  supreme  judge  and  executive 
of  the  world,  and  he  has  not  hesitated  to  award  to 
himself  the  lion's  share  of  everything.  He  has 
ransacked  his  fancy  for  adjectives  with  which  to 
praise  himself,  and  driven  his  inventive  faculties 
to  the  verge  of  distraction  in  search  of  justification 
for  his  crimes  upon  those  around  him.  Every 
individual  bent  on  deeds  of  darkness  first  seeks  in 
his  own  mind  justification  for  his  purposed  sins. 
And  it  is  a  caustic  comment  on  the  character  of 
human  conviction  that  no  enthusiastic  criminal — 
from  the  marauder  of  continents  to  the  kitchen 
pilferer — ever  yet  sought  unsuccessfully  at  the 
court  of  his  conscience  for  a  sinful  permit.  It 
was  an  easy  matter,  therefore,  for  man — aided  as 
he  was  by  such  an  experienced  imagination — to 
convince  himself  that  all  other  animals  were  made 
for  him,  that  they  were  made  without  feeling  or 
intelligence,  and  that  hence  he  was  justified  in 
using  in  any  way  he  chose  the  conveniences  so 
generously  provided  by  an  eccentric  providence. 

But  Darwin  has  lived.     Beings  have  come  into 
the  world,  we  now  know,  through  the  operation  of 


THE  CONFLICT  OF  SCIENCE      107 

natural  law.  Man  is  not  different  from  the  rest. 
The  story  of  Eden  is  a  fabrication,  bequeathed  to 
us  by  our  well-meaning  but  dimly-lighted  ancestors. 
There  has  been  no  more  miracle  in  the  origin  of 
the  human  species  than  in  the  origin  of  any  other 
species.  And  there  is  no  more  miracle  in  the  origin 
of  a  species  than  there  is  in  the  birth  of  a  molecule 
or  in  the  breaking  of  a  tired  wave  on  the  beach. 
Man  was  not  made  in  the  image  of  the  hypothetical 
creator  of  heaven  and  earth,  but  in  the  image  of 
the  ape.  Man  is  not  a  fallen  god,  but  a  pro- 
moted reptile.  The  beings  around  him  are  not 
conveniences,  but  cousins.  Instead  of  stretching 
away  to  the  stars,  man's  pedigree  slinks  down  into 
the  sea.  Horrible  revelation!  Frightful  anti- 
thesis !  Instead  of  celestial  genesis  and  a  '  fall ' 
— long  and  doleful  promotion.  Instead  of  elysian 
gardens  and  romance — the  slime.  Instead  of  a 
god  with  royal  nostrils  miraculously  animating  an 
immortal  duplicate — a  little  lounging  cellule,  too 
small  to  be  seen  and  too  senseless  to  distinguish 
between  midnight  and  noon.  But  the  situation  is 
not  half  so  horrible  as  it  looks  to  be  to  those  who 
see  only  the  skin  of  things.  Is  it  not  better,  after 
all,  to  be  the  honourable  outcome  of  a  straight- 
forward evolution  than  the  offspring  of  flunky- 
loving  celestials  ?  Are  the  illustrious  children  of 
the  ape  less  glorious  than  the  sycophants  of 
irrational  theological  systems?  Darwin  dealt  in 
his  quiet  way  some  malicious  blows  to  human 
conceit,  but  he  also  bequeathed  to  a  misguided 
world  the  elements  of  its  ultimate  redemption. 


io8         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

The  supposed  psychical  gulf  between  human 
and  -  non-human  beings  has  no  more  existence, 
outside  the  flamboyant  imagination  of  man,  than 
has  the  once-supposed  physical  gulf.  It  is  pure 
fiction.  The  supposition  is  a  relic  of  the  rapidly 
dwindling  vanity  of  anthropocentricism,  and  is 
perpetuated  from  age  to  age  by  human  selfishness 
and  conceit.  It  has  no  foundation  either  in 
science  or  in  common-sense.  Man  strives  to 
lessen  his  guilt  by  the  laudation  of  himself  and 
the  disparagement  and  degradation  of  his  victims. 
Like  the  ostrich,  who,  pursued  by  death,  impro- 
vises an  imaginary  escape  by  plunging  its  head 
into  the  desert,  so  man,  pursued  by  the  vengeful 
correctives  of  his  own  conscience,  fabricates  a 
fictitious  innocence  by  the  calumniation  of  those 
upon  whom  he  battens.  But  such  excuses  cannot 
much  longer  hold  out  against  the  rising  conscious- 
ness of  kinship.  Psychology,  like  all  other  sciences, 
is  rapidly  ceasing  to  attend  exclusively  to  human 
phenomena.  It  is  lifting  up  its  eyes  and  looking 
about ;  it  is  preparing  to  become  comparative. 
It  has  come  to  realise  that  the  mind  of  man  is  but 
a  single  shoot  of  a  something  which  ramifies  the 
entire  animal  world,  and  that  in  order  to  under- 
stand its  subject  it  is  necessary  for  it  to  familiarise 
itself  with  the  whole  field  of  phenomenon.  The 
soul  of  man  did  not  commence  to  be  in  the  savage. 
It  commenced  to  be  in  the  worm,  whose  life  man 
grinds  out  with  his  heel,  and  in  the  bivalve  that 
flounders  in  his  broth.  The  roots  of  conscious- 
ness are  in  the  sea.  Side  by  side  with  physical 


THE  CONFLICT  OF  SCIENCE      109 

evolution  has  gone  on  psychical  evolution;  side 
by  side  with  the  evolution  of  organs  and  tissues 
has  gone  on  the  evolution  of  intellect,  sensibility, 
and  will.  Human  nature  and  human  mind  are 
no  more  sui  generis  than  are  human  anatomy  and 
physiology.  The  same  considerations  that  prove 
that  man's  material  organism  is  the  cumulative 
result  of  long  evolution  proclaim  that  human 
mind,  the  immaterial  concomitant  of  the  material 
organism,  is  also  the  cumulative  result  of  long 
evolution. 

We  might  just  as  well  recognise  facts  first  as 
last,  for  they  will  have  to  be  recognised  some  time. 
Truths  are  not  put  down  by  inhospitality — they 
are  simply  put  off.  The  universe  has  a  policy,  a 
program.  We  may  close  our  eyes  to  the  facts 
around  us,  hoping  in  this  way  to  compel  them  to 
pass  away  or  be  forgotten.  But  they  do  not  pass 
away,  nor  will  they  be  forgotten.  They  simply 
become  invisible.  They  will  live  on  and  present 
themselves  to  other  minds  or  ages  or  climes  more 
hospitable  or  honest  than  our  own.  The  only 
proper  attitude  of  mind  to  assume  toward  the 
various  doctrines  existing  among  men  is  the 
attitude  of  perfect  willingness  to  believe  anything 
— anything  that  appeals  to  us  as  being  reasonable 
and  right.  The  great  majority  of  men,  however, 
are  intellectual  solids — unable  to  move  and  un- 
willing to  think.  They  have  certain  beliefs  to  which 
they  are  determined  to  hold  on,  and  everything  that 
does  not  fit  in  with  these  beliefs  is  rejected  as  a 
matter  of  course. 


no         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

II.  Evidences  of  Psychical  Evolution. 

That  mind  has  evolved,  and  that  there  is  a 
psychical  kinship,  an  actual  consanguinity  of 
feelings  and  ideas,  among  all  the  forms  of  animal 
life  is  proved  incontestably  by  the  following  facts: 

i.  The  evolution  of  mind  is  implied  by  the  fact 
of  the  evolution  of  structures.  '  I  hold,'  says 
Romanes,  in  the  introduction  to  his  great  work 
on  '  Mental  Evolution,'  '  that,  if  the  doctrine  of 
organic  evolution  is  accepted,  it  carries  with  it, 
as  a  necessary  corollary,  the  doctrine  of  mental 
evolution.'  It  makes  no  difference  what  theory 
we  adopt  regarding  the  essential  natures  of  the 
physical  and  the  psychical — whether  we  agree  with 
the  materialist  that  mind  is  an  attribute  of  matter, 
with  the  idealist  that  matter  is  a  creation  of  mind, 
with  the  monist  that  mind  and  body  are  only 
different  aspects  of  the  same  central  entity,  or 
with  the  dualist  that  body  and  soul  are  two  distinct 
but  temporarily  dependent  existences — we  must 
in  any  case  recognise  the  fact,  which  is  perceived 
by  all,  that  there  is  an  ever-faithful  parallel  be- 
tween the  neural  and  psychical  phenomena  of 
every  organism.  And  if  the  elements  which 
enter  into  and  make  up  the  physical  structure  of 
man  have  been  derived  from,  and  determined  by, 
preceding  forms  of  life,  the  elements  which  enter 
into  and  make  up  the  psychical  counterpart  of 
the  physical  have  also,  without  any  doubt,  been 
inherited  from,  and  determined  by,  ancestral  life 
forms. 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  tn 

2.  Closely  allied  to  the  foregoing  reason  for  a 
belief  in  the  evolution  of  mind  is  that  derived  from 
a  comparative  survey  of  the  nervous  system  in 
man  and  other  animals.  In  man,  mind  is  closely 
associated  with  a  certain  tissue  or  system  of 
tissues — nerve  tissue  or  the  nervous  system.  That 
mind  is  correlated  with  nerve  structure,  and  that 
mental  anatomy  may  be  learned  from  a  study  of 
the  anatomy  of  the  nervous  system,  especially  of 
the  brain,  is  the  basic  postulate  of  the  science  of 
physiological  psychology.  Now,  nerve  cells  exist 
in  all  animals  above  the  sponge,  and  a  compara- 
tively well-developed  nervous  system  is  found  even 
among  many  of  the  invertebrates,  as  the  higher 
worms,  crustaceans,  insects,  and  mollusks.  The 
nervous  system  of  invertebrates,  though  composed 
of  the  same  kind  of  tissue,  is  constructed  accord- 
ing to  a  somewhat  different  plan  of  architecture 
from  that  of  the  vertebrates.  But  in  all  of  the 
great  family  of  backboned  animals  the  nervous 
system  is  built  on  the  same  general  plan  as  in 
man,  with  a  cerebro-spinal  trunk  extending  from 
the  head  along  the  back  and  motory  and  sensory 
nerves  ramifying  to  all  parts  of  the  body.  There 
is  also  a  sympathetic  nervous  system  in  all  animals 
down  as  far  as  the  insects.  The  brain,  which  is 
the  most  important  part  of  the  nervous  system,  and 
which  has  been  called  the  'organ  of  consciousness,' 
presents  throughout  the  animal  kingdom,  from 
its  beginning  in  the  worms  to  man,  a  graduated 
series  of  increasing  complication  proceeding  out 
of  the  same  fundamental  type.  This  is  especially 


H2         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

true  of  the  vertebrates.  Fishes,  amphibians, 
reptiles,  birds,  and  mammals,  all  have  in  their 
brains  the  same  primary  parts,  the  same  five 
fundamental  divisions,  as  are  found  in  the  brain 
of  man.  Hence,  whatever  may  be  thought  about 
the  mental  states  of  invertebrates,  we  have  the 
right,  in  the  case  of  the  vertebrate  orders  of  life, 
to  infer,  from  the  general  similarity  of  their 
nervous  system  to  our  own,  that  they  have  a 
corresponding  similarity  to  ourselves  in  mental 
constitution  and  experience. 

3.  The  evolution  of  mind  is  suggested  b)'  the 
existence  in  the   animal  world  of  all  grades  of 
intelligence,  from  almost  mindless  forms  to  forms 
even    exceeding    in    some    respects    the    mental 
attainments    of    men.      The    jelly-fish    and   the 
philosopher   are    not    mental    aliens.     They  are 
linked  to  each  other  by  a  continuous  gradation  of 
intermediate  intelligences.    The  existence  of  these 
grades  of  mental  development  suggest  psychical 
evolution  and  kinship,  just  as  the  existence  of  like 
grades  of  structural  development  suggest  physical 
evolution. 

4.  In   the  mental    life    of   animals  the  same 
factors  of  evolution  exist  as  those  by  means  of 
which  organic  structures  have  been  brought  into 
existence,  and  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the 
operation  of  these  factors  have  produced  in  the 
mental  world  results  analogous  to  those  produced 
by  the  operation  of  the  same  factors  among  organic 
structures. 

Men  and  other  animals  vary  in  their  natures 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  113 

and  mental  faculties  quite  as  much  as  they  do  in 
colour,  size,  and  shape.  It  is  commonly  supposed 
that  the  mental  and  temperamental  variety  existing 
among  individual  men  does  not  exist  among  indi- 
vidual birds,  quadrupeds,  insects,  etc.  But  a  little 
observation  or  reflection  ought  to  be  enough  to 
convince  anyone  that  such  a  supposition  belongs 
to  that  batch  of  pre-Darwinian  mistakes  presented 
to  us  by  an  over-generous  past.  We  are  not  ac- 
quainted with  the  inhabitants  of  our  fields  and 
barn-yards.  We  are  almost  as  ignorant  of  the 
mental  life  and  personality  of  these  door-yard 
neighbours  and  friends  of  ours  as  we  would  be  if 
they  were  the  inhabitants  of  another  continent. 
That  is  why  our  obtuse  minds  lump  them  together 
so  indiscriminately — we  do  not  know  anything 
about  them.  We  never  take  the  trouble,  or  think 
it  worth  while,  to  get  acquainted  with  them, 
much  less  to  study  and  know  them.  We  have 
grown  up  in  the  falsehood  that  they  are  altogether 
different  from  what  we  are,  and  that  it  is  really 
not  worth  while  to  bother  our  gigantic  heads 
about  them,  except  to  use  them  when  it  comes 
handy,  or  kick  them  to  one  side,  or  execute  them, 
when  they  get  in  the  way.  Everybody  else  looks 
at  the  matter  in  about  the  same  way,  so  we  just 
let  it  go  at  that. 

There  is  a  sameness  about  foreigners  and  other 
classes  of  human  beings  with  whom  we  are  but 
slightly,  or  not  at  all,  acquainted,  until  we  come 
to  know  them  and  can  discriminate  one  from 
another.  I  remember  once  asking  my  sister,  ij 

8 


ri4         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

her  baby,  which  looked  to  me  like  all  other 
babies  I  had  ever  seen,  were  mixed  up  with  a  lot 
of  other  babies  of  about  the  same  age,  whether 
she  could  pick  hers  out  from  all  the  rest,  and  she 
gave  me  an  unmistakable  affirmative  by  answering, 
1  What  a  foolish  question  !' 

There  is  less  variety  among  the  individuals  of 
non-human  races  than  among  individual  men, 
just  as  there  is  less  variety  among  individual 
savages  than  among  the  members  of  a  civilised 
community.  But  there  is  mental  diversity  among 
all  beings,  and  we  only  need  to  whittle  our  obser- 
vation a  little  to  recognise  the  fact.  You  never 
hear  the  keeper  of  a  menagerie  or  any  intelligent 
associate  of  dogs,  horses,  birds,  or  insects  say 
there  is  no  individuality  among  these  animals. 
Brehm,  the  great  German  naturalist,  assures  us 
that  each  individual  monkey  of  all  those  he  kept 
tame  in  Africa  had  its  own  peculiar  temper  and 
disposition.  And  this  is  no  more  than  what 
everyone  who  knows  anything  about  it  knows  to 
be  true  of  dogs,  horses,  cats,  cattle,  birds,  and 
even  fishes  and  insects.  Any  intelligent  dog- 
fancier  or  pigeon-fancier  can  tell  you  the  personal 
peculiarities  of  every  one  of  the  fifty  or  a  hundred 
dogs  or  pigeons  in  his  charge.  He  has  watched 
and  studied  them  since  they  came  into  existence, 
and  through  this  continuous  association  he  has 
come  to  know  them.  He  simply  makes  discrimina- 
tions that  are  not  made  by  the  casual  or  superficial 
observer.  The  Laplander  knows  and  names  each 
reindeer  in  his  herd,  though  to  a  stranger  they  are 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  115 

all  as  much  alike  as  the  multitudes  on  an  ant-hill. 
The  Peckhams  of  Milwaukee,  those  indefatigable 
investigators  of  spiders  and  insects,  are  constantly 
telling  us  of  the  wonderful  individuality  possessed 
by  these  lowly  lessees  of  our  fields  and  gardens. 
In  their  work  on  '  The  Habits  and  Instincts  of  the 
Solitary  Wasps,'  speaking  of  the  ammophiles,  these 
authors  say  :  '  In  this  species,  as  in  every  one  that 
we  have  studied,  we  have  found  a  most  interesting 
variation  among  the  different  individuals,  not  only 
in  methods,  but  in  character  and  intellect.  While 
one  was  beguiled  from  her  hunting  by  every  sorrel 
blossom  she  passed,  another  stuck  to  her  work 
with  indefatigable  perseverance.  While  one  stung 
her  caterpillars  so  carelessly  and  made  her  nest  in 
so  shiftless  a  way  that  her  young  could  survive 
only  through  some  lucky  chance,  another  devoted 
herself  to  these  duties  not  only  with  conscientious 
earnestness,  but  with  an  apparent  craving  after 
artistic  perfection  that  was  touching  to  see.'  The 
variation  in  the  mental  phenomena  of  animals, 
including  man,  is  partly  innate,  and  partly  the 
result  of  environment  or  education. 

Animals  not  only  vary  in  their  mental  qualities, 
but  they  also  inherit  these  variations,  just  as  they 
do  physical  properties  and  peculiarities.  Evidence 
of  this  is  furnished  by  every  new  being  that 
comes  into  the  world.  Insanity  runs  in  fami- 
lies, and  so  does  genius  and  criminality.  Even 
the  most  trifling  idiosyncrasies  are  often  trans- 
mitted, not  only  by  men,  but  also  by  dogs,  horses, 
and  other  animals.  Such  qualities  of  mind  aa 

8—2 


n6 

courage,  fidelity,  good  and  bad  temper,  intelligence, 
timidity,  special  tastes  and  aptitudes,  are  cer- 
tainly transmitted  in  all  the  higher  orders  oi 
animal  life. 

Animals  are  also  selected,  are  enabled  to  survive 
in  the  struggle  for  life  quite  as  much  through  the 
possession  by  them  of  certain  mental  qualities  as 
on  account  of  their  physical  characters.  Whether 
the  selections  are  made  by  nature  or  by  man,  they 
are  not  determined  by  the  physical  facts  of  size, 
strength,  speed,  and  the  like,  more  than  by  cunning, 
courage,  sagacity,  skill,  industry,  devotion,  ferocity, 
tractability,  and  other  mental  properties.  The 
fittest  survive,  and  the  fittest  may  be  the  most 
timid  or  analytic  as  well  as  the  most  powerful. 
No  better  illustration  of  this  truth  can  be  found 
than  that  furnished  by  man  himself.  Man  is  by 
nature  a  comparatively  feeble  animal.  He  is 
neither  large  nor  powerful.  Yet  he  has  been 
selected  to  prosper  over  all  other  animals  because 
of  his  ingenuity,  sympathy,  and  art.  The  great 
feeling  and  civilisation  of  higher  men  have  been 
built  up  by  slow  accretion  due  to  the  operation  ol 
the  law  of  survival  extending  over  vast  measures 
of  time.  Creeds  and  instincts,  governments  and 
impulses,  forms  of  thought  and  forms  of  expres- 
sion, have  struggled  and  survived  just  as  have 
cells  and  species.  A  struggle  for  existence  is 
constantly  going  on,  as  Max  M tiller  has  pointed 
out,  even  among  the  words  and  grammatical 
forms  of  every  language.  The  better,  shorter, 
easier  forms  are  constantly  gaining  the  ascendancy, 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  117 

and  the  longer  and  more  cumbrous  expressions 
grow  obsolete. 

If,  therefore,  the  higher  types  of  mind  have  not 
come  into  existence  as  have  the  higher  types  oi 
structure,  through  evolution  from  simpler  and 
more  generalised  forms,  it  has  not  been  due  to 
the  absence  of  the  factors  necessary  for  bringing 
about  this  evolution. 

5.  The  presumption  created  by  the  existence  of 
the  factors  of  psychic  evolution  is  strengthened  by 
the  facts  of  artificial  selection.  We  know  mind 
can  evolve,  for  it  has  done  so  in  many  cases.  The 
races  of  domesticated  animals,  the  races  whom 
man  has  exploited  and  preyed  upon  during  the 
past  several  thousand  years,  have,  many  of  them, 
been  completely  changed  in  character  and  intelli- 
gence through  human  selection.  Old  instincts 
have  been  wiped  out  and  new  ones  implanted.  In 
many  instances  the  psychology  has  been  not  only 
revolutionised,  but  remade. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  dog.  The  dog  is  a 
reformed  bandit.  It  is  a  revised  wolf  or  jackal. 
It  has  been  completely  transformed  by  human 
selection ;  indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  the  dog 
in  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  thousand  years  has 
made  greater  advances  in  sagacity  and  civilisation 
than  any  other  animal,  scarcely  even  excepting 
man.  Man  has  made  wonderful  strides  along 
purely  intellectual  lines,  but  in  the  improvement 
of  his  emotions  he  has  not  been  so  successful. 
The  rapid  development  of  the  dog  in  feeling  and 
intelligence  has  no  doubt  been  due  to  the  fact  that 


n8         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

his  utility  to  man  has  always  depended  largely  on 
his  good  sense  and  fidelity,  and  man  has  persis- 
tently emphasised  these  qualities  in  his  selection. 
Fierceness  and  distrust — two  of  the  most  promi- 
nent traits  in  the  psychology  of  the  primitive  dog 
— have  been  entirely  eradicated  in  the  higher  races 
of  dogs.  There  is  not  anywhere  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  a  more  trustful,  affectionate,  and  docile 
being  than  this  one-time  cut-throat.  Whether 
the  dog  has  been  derived  from  the  wolf  or  from 
some  wild  canine  race  now  extinct,  or  from  several 
distinct  ancestors,  he  must  have  had  originally  a 
fierce,  distrustful,  and  barbaric  nature,  for  all  of 
the  undomesticated  members  of  the  dog  family — 
wolves,  foxes,  jackals,  etc. — have  natures  of  this 
sort. 

There  are  about  175  different  races  of  domestic 
dogs.  They  represent  almost  as  great  a  range  of 
development  as  do  the  races  of  men.  Some  of 
them  are  exceedingly  primitive,  while  others  are 
highly  intelligent  and  civilised.  The  Eskimo  dogs 
are  really  nothing  but  wolves  that  have  been 
trained  to  the  service  of  man.  They  look  like 
wolves,  and  have  the  wolf  psychology.  They  are 
not  able  to  bark,  like  ordinary  dogs ;  they  howl 
like  wolves,  and  their  ears  stand  up  straight,  like 
the  ears  of  all  wild  Canidae.  Some  of  the  more 
advanced  of  the  canine  races — like  the  sheep-dogs, 
pointers,  and  St.  Bernards — are  animals  of  great 
sympathy  and  sensibility.  When  educated,  these 
dogs  are  almost  human  in  their  impulses  and  in 
their  powers  of  discernment.  In  patience,  vigi- 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  119 

lance,  and  devotion  to  duty,  they  are  superior  to 
many  men.  At  a  word,  or  even  a  look,  from  its 
master,  the  loyal  collie  will  gather  the  sheep  scat- 
tered for  miles  around  to  the  place  designated, 
and  do  it  with  such  tact  and  expedition  as  to 
command  admiration.  It  has  been  said  that  if  it 
were  not  for  this  faithful  and  competent  canine 
the  highlands  of  Scotland  would  be  almost  useless 
for  sheep-raising  purposes,  because  of  the  greater 
expense  that  would  be  entailed  if  men  were  em- 
ployed. One  collie  will  do  the  work  of  several 
men,  and  will  do  it  better,  and  the  generous- 
hearted  creature  pours  out  its  services  like  water. 
It  requires  no  compensation  except  table  refuse 
and  a  straw  bed.  In  South  America  sheep-dogs 
are  trained  to  act  as  shepherds  and  assume  the 
whole  responsibility  of  tending  the  flock.  '  It  is  a 
common  thing,'  says  Darwin,  '  to  meet  a  large 
flock  of  sheep  guarded  by  one  or  two  dogs,  at  a 
distance  of  some  miles  from  any  house  or  man.' 
When  the  dogs  get  hungry,  they  come  home  for 
food,  but  immediately  return  to  the  flock  on  being 
fed.  '  It  is  amusing,'  remarks  this  writer,  '  to 
observe,  when  approaching  a  flock,  how  the  dog 
immediately  advances  barking,  while  the  sheep 
all  close  in  his  rear  as  around  the  oldest  ram.' 

Romanes  relates  an  incident  which  well  illus- 
trates the  high  character  and  intelligence  of  the 
dog  and  its  wonderful  devotion  to  a  trust.  '  It 
was  a  Scotch  collie.  Her  master  was  in  the  habit 
of  consigning  sheep  to  her  charge  without  super- 
vision. On  this  particular  occasion  he  remained 


120         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

behind  or  proceeded  by  another  road.  On  arriving 
at  home  late  in  the  evening,  he  was  astonished  to 
learn  that  his  faithful  animal  had  not  made  her 
appearance  with  the  drove.  He  immediately  set 
out  in  search  of  her.  But  on  going  out  into  the 
streets,  there  she  was  coming  with  the  drove,  not 
one  missing,  and,  marvellous  to  relate,  she  was 
carrying  a  young  puppy  in  her  mouth.  She  had 
been  taken  in  travail  on  the  hills,  and  how  the 
poor  creature  had  contrived  to  manage  her  drove 
in  her  condition  is  beyond  human  calculation,  for 
her  road  lay  through  sheep  all  the  way.  Her 
master's  heart  smote  him  when  he  saw  what  she 
had  suffered  and  effected.  But  she  was  nothing 
daunted,  and  after  depositing  her  young  one  in  a 
place  of  safety  she  again  set  out  full  speed  for  the 
hills,  and  brought  another  and  another,  till  she 
brought  the  whole  litter,  one  by  one  ;  but  the  last 
one  was  dead'(i). 

What  a  wonderful  transformation  in  canine 
character !  The  very  beings  whose  blood  the  dog 
once  drank  with  ravenous  thirst  it  now  protects 
with  courage  and  fidelity.  And  this  transforma- 
tion in  character  is  not  due  to  education  simply. 
It  is  innate.  Young  dogs  brought  from  Tierra 
del  Fuego  or  Australia,  where  the  natives  do  not 
keep  such  domestic  animals  as  sheep,  pigs,  and 
poultry,  invariably  have  an  incurable  propensity 
for  attacking  these  animals. 

The  feeling  of  ownership  possessed  by  so  many 
dogs  is  an  entirely  new  element  in  canine  char- 
acter, a  trait  implanted  wholly  by  human  selection. 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  121 

Bold  and  confident  on  his  own  premises,  the  dog 
immediately  becomes  weak  and  apologetic  when 
placed  in  circumstances  in  which  he  feels  he  has 
no  rights. 

The  pointers  and  setters  have  been  developed 
as  distinct  breeds  by  human  selection  during  the 
past  150  or  200  years. 

What  is  true  of  the  dog  is  true  also,  to  a  large 
extent,  of  the  cat,  cow,  horse,  sheep,  goat,  fowl, 
and  other  domestic  animals.  Serene  and  peaceful 
puss  is  the  tranquillised  descendant  of  the  wild 
cat  of  Egypt,  one  of  the  most  untamable  of  all 
animals.  The  migratory  instinct,  so  strong  in 
wild  water-fowl,  is  almost  absent  from  our  geese 
and  ducks,  as  is  the  fighting  propensity  (prominent 
in  the  Indian  jungle-bird)  from  most  varieties  of 
the  domesticated  chicken.  There  are  now  as 
many  as  a  hundred  different  kinds  of  domesticated 
animals,  and  there  is  scarcely  one  of  these  animals 
that  has  not  been  profoundly  changed  in  character 
during  the  period  of  its  domestication.  There  are 
much  greater  changes  in  some  races  than  in  others. 
Some  races  have  been  much  longer  in  captivity 
than  others.  And  then,  too,  there  is  great  differ- 
ence in  the  degree  of  plasticity  in  different  races, 
the  races  of  ancient  origin  being  much  more  fixed 
in  their  psychology  than  those  of  more  recent 
beginnings.  In  some  races,  too — as  in  the  sheep 
— the  selections  made  by  man  have  been  made 
primarily  with  reference  to  certain  physical 
qualities,  and  in  these  cases  the  mental  qualities 
have  been  only  incidentally  affected.  In  Poly- 


122         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

nesia,  where  it  is  selected  for  its  flavour  instead  of 
for  its  fleetness  or  intelligence,  the  dog  is  said  to 
be  a  very  stupid  animal.  But  in  most  cases  of 
domestication  the  changes  wrought  by  selection 
in  the  mental  make-up  of  the  race  have  been  fully 
as  great  as  the  changes  in  body,  and  in  some 
instances  much  greater.  And  the  process  by 
which  these  great  changes  in  psychology  have 
been  effected  is  in  principle  identically  the  same 
as  that  by  which  mental  evolution  in  general  is 
assumed  to  have  been  brought  about. 

6.  The  evolution  of  mind  in  the  animal  world 
in  general  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  mind  in 
man  has  evolved.  The  rich,  luminous  intellect 
of  civilised  man,  with  its  art,  science,  law,  litera- 
ture, government,  and  morality,  has  been  evolved 
from  the  rude,  raw,  demon-haunted  mind  of  the 
savage.  Evidence  of  this  evolution  is  furnished 
by  the  recorded  facts  of  human  history,  by  the 
antiquarian  collections  of  our  museums,  and  by 
a  study  of  existing  savages. 

History  everywhere  has  come  out  of  the  night, 
out  of  the  deep  gloom  of  the  unrecorded.  But  it 
has  not  leaped  forth  like  lightning  out  of  the 
darkness.  It  has  dawned,  night  being  succeeded 
by  the  amorphous  shadows  of  legend  and  tradition, 
and  these  in  turn  by  the  attested  events  of  true 
history.  Almost  every  civilised  people  can  trace 
back  its  genealogy  to  a  time  when  it  was  repre- 
sented on  the  earth  by  one  or  more  tribes  of 
savage  or  half -savage  ancestors.  The  Anglo- 
Saxons  go  back  to  the  Angles,  Saxons,  and  Jutes, 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  123 

three  semi-savage  tribes  who  came  to  England 
from  the  borderlands  of  the  Baltic  fourteen  or 
fifteen  centuries  ago.  The  French  are  the  de- 
scendants of  the  Gauls,  who  formed  the  scattered 
population  of  warring  and  superstitious  tribes 
referred  to  by  Julius  Caesar  in  the  opening  lines 
of  his  '  Commentaries.'  The  blue-eyed  Germans 
came  from  the  Cimbri,  the  Goths,  and  the  Vandals, 
those  bold,  wild  hordes  who  charged  out  of  the 
north  to  battle  with  the  power  of  Rome.  And  all 
of  the  Aryan  races — English,  German,  Italian, 
Scandinavian,  Russian,  Roman,  Greek,  and  Persian 
— trace  their  ancestry  back,  by  means  of  common 
languages  and  legends,  to  a  time  when  they  were 
wandering  tribes  of  nomads  tenting  somewhere 
on  the  plains  of  transcaspian  Asia. 

In  all  our  museums  there  are  collections  of  the 
relics  of  prehistoric  peoples.  These  collections 
consist  of  objects  upon  which  men  in  distant  ages 
of  the  world  have  wrought — their  weapons,  orna- 
ments, utensils,  implements,  and  playthings — 
which  have  been  saved  from  the  teeth  of  Time 
by  their  durability.  The  character  of  the  minds 
which  operated  on  these  objects,  which  produced 
and  used  them,  may  be  inferred  from  the  character 
of  the  objects,  just  as  the  life  and  surroundings  of 
an  ancient  animal  or  plant  may  be  inferred  from 
its  fossil.  These  relics  are  of  stone,  bone,  bronze, 
and  iron.  They  are  found  in  almost  every  region 
of  the  earth — all  over  Europe  and  its  islands,  in 
western  and  central  Asia,  in  China  and  Japan,  in 
Malay,  Australia,  and  New  Zealand,  in  the  islands 


124         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

of  the  Pacific,  and  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  America.  They  antedate  human  history 
by  thousands  of  years.  They  are  the  ruins  of  the 
Stone  Age,  the  Bronze  Age,  and  the  Iron  Age  of 
mankind.  In  all  of  these  remains  there  is  evidence 
of  a  slow  but  gradual  improvement  as  we  approach 
the  present.  There  are  places  on  the  earth  where 
the  evolution  of  human  implements,  from  the 
rudest  chipped  stones  to  the  comparatively  finished 
products  of  historic  peoples,  is  epitomised  in  the 
deposits  of  a  few  feet  in  depth.  One  of  these 
occurs  at  Chelles,  a  suburb  of  Paris,  and  was 
made  the  subject  of  a  paper  by  Professor  Packard 
in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  May,  1902. 
Here  three  distinct  layers,  containing  human 
remains  entirely  different  in  character  from  each 
other,  appear  within  a  depth  of  30  feet  from  the 
surface.  The  lowest  bed,  a  layer  of  pebbles  and 
sand,  and  probably  preglacial  in  origin,  contains 
the  famous  Chellean  '  axes,'  rude  almond-shaped 
implements  of  chipped  flint,  and  used  by  these 
ancient  inhabitants  by  being  held  in  the  hand. 
In  this  bed  are  also  found  the  bones  of  the  straight- 
tusked  elephant,  cave-bear,  big-nosed  rhinoceros, 
and  other  species  now  extinct.  The  next  bed  is 
the  interglacial,  and  contains  implements  entirely 
different  from  the  one  below  it,  among  which  are 
skin-scrapers  and  lance-points.  The  animal  re- 
mains of  this  bed  are  also  different  from  those 
found  in  the  bed  below,  and  include  animals  like 
the  musk-ox  and  the  reindeer,  which  were  probably 
driven  to  this  southern  clime  from  more  northern 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  125 

regions  by  the  excessive  cold  of  the  time.  The 
third  bed,  which  lies  just  below  the  surface  soils, 
contains  polished  stone  axes  and  other  remains  of 
human  industry  cotemporaneous  with  the  Swiss 
lake-dwellers.  From  the  swamps  and  loams  are 
sometimes  dug  up  the  remains  of  Gallo- Roman 
civilisations — Gallic  coins,  serpentine  axes,  and 
bronzes  of  the  time  of  the  Antonines. 

No  one  can  fully  realise  the  vast  advance  that 
has  been  made  by  the  human  mind  until  he  has 
looked  upon  a  savage — has  seen  the  savage  in  his 
native  haunts  attacking  the  problems  of  his  daily 
life,  and  has  tasted  of  his  philosophy  and  disposi- 
tion. The  savage  is  the  ancestor  of  all  higher  men. 
When  we  look  upon  the  savage,  we  look  upon  the 
infancy  of  the  human  world.  All  of  the  laws, 
languages,  sciences,  governments,  religions,  and 
philosophies  of  civilised  man,  or  nearly  all  of  them 
at  any  rate,  are  the  exfoliated  laws,  languages, 
sciences,  governments,  religions,  and  philosophies 
of  savages.  It  is  impossible  to  understand  the 
laws  of  civilised  societies  without  a  knowledge  of 
the  laws  of  savage  societies.  The  same  thing  is 
true  of  government,  religion,  and  philosophy — 
and  of  human  nature  itself.  Human  nature  as 
exhibited  by  civilised  men  and  women — I  mean 
men  and  women  with  a  veneering  of  civility,  not 
really  civilised  folks,  for  there  are  none  of  them 
on  the  earth — is  a  perpetual  enigma  unless  it  is 
illumined  by  restrospection,  by  a  comparative 
study  of  human  nature,  by  a  study  of  human 
nature  as  seen  in  more  and  more  primitive  men 


126         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

and  women.  The  mind  of  the  savage,  as  com- 
pared with  that  of  civilised  man,  is  exceedingly 
primitive.  The  picture  drawn  by  Gilbraith  of  the 
North  American  Sioux  is  a  typical  picture  of 
savage  life  and  character.  Gilbraith  lived  among 
these  tribes  for  several  years,  and  was  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  them.  He  says : 

'  They  are  bigoted,  barbarous,  and  exceedingly 
superstitious.  They  regard  most  of  the  vices  as 
virtues.  Theft,  arson,  rape,  and  murder  are  re- 
garded by  them  as  the  means  of  distinction.  The 
young  Indian  is  taught  from  childhood  to  regard 
killing  as  the  highest  of  virtues.  In  their  dances 
and  at  their  feasts,  the  warriors  recite  their  deeds 
of  theft,  pillage,  and  slaughter  as  precious  things ; 
and  the  highest,  indeed  the  only,  ambition  of  the 
young  brave  is  to  secure  "  the  feather,"  which  is 
but  the  record  of  his  having  murdered,  or  partici- 
pated in  the  murder  of,  some  human  being — 
whether  man,  woman,  or  child,  it  is  im- 
material' (19). 

*  Conscience,'  says  Burton,  'does  not  exist  in 
East  Africa,  and  "  repentance  "  simply  expresses 
regret  for  missed  opportunities  for  crime.  Robbery 
makes  an  honorable  man ;  and  murder,  the  more 
atrocious  the  crime  the  better,  makes  the  hero '  (2). 

Many  things  appear  natural  and  self-evident  to 
*He  savage  which  seem  to  us  actually  revolting. 
When  the  Fuegians  are  hard  pressed  by  want, 
they  kill  their  old  women  for  food  rather  than 
their  dogs,  saying :  '  Old  women  no  use ;  dogs 
kill  otters.'  'What!'  said  a  negro  to  Burton, 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  127 

'am   I   to  starve  while  my  sister  has  children 
whom  she  can  sell  ?' 

Lubbock,  in  his  great  work  on  '  The  Origin  of 
Civilisation,'  cites  hundreds  of  instances  of  savage 
rudeness  and  simplicity  which  seem  almost  in- 
credible to  one  accustomed  all  his  life  to  types  -of 
human  character  such  as  are  found  in  Europe  and 
America.  For  instance,  '  when  the  natives  of  the 
Lower  Murray  first  saw  pack-oxen,  some  of  them 
were  frightened  and  took  them  for  demons  with 
spears  on  their  heads,  while  others  thought  they 
were  the  wives  of  the  settlers,  because  they  carried 
the  baggage.'  Speaking  of  the  wild  men  in  the 
interior  of  Borneo,  this  writer  says:  'They  live 
absolutely  in  a  state  of  nature,  neither  cultivating 
the  ground  nor  living  in  huts.  They  eat  neither 
rice  nor  salt,  and  do  not  associate  with  each 
other,  but  rove  about  the  woods  like  wild  beasts. 
The  sexes  meet  in  the  jungle.  When  the  children 
are  old  enough  to  shift  for  themselves,  they  usually 
separate,  neither  one  afterwards  thinking  of  the 
other.  At  night  they  sleep  under  some  large 
tree  whose  branches  hang  low.  They  fasten  the 
children  to  the  branches  in  a  kind  of  swing,  and 
build  a  fire  around  the  tree  to  protect  them  from 
snakes  and  wild  beasts.  The  poor  creatures  are 
looked  on  and  treated  by  the  other  Dyaks  as  wild 
beasts.'  Lubbock  sums  up  his  conclusions  on  the 
morality  of  savages  in  the  following  pathetic 
acknowledgment:  'I  do  not  remember  a  single 
instance  in  which  a  savage  is  recorded  as  having 
shown  any  symptoms  of  remorse ;  and  almost  the 


128         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

only  case  I  can  call  to  mind  in  which  a  man 
belonging  to  one  of  the  lower  races  has  accounted 
for  an  act  by  saying  explicitly  that  it  was  right, 
was  when  Mr.  Hunt  asked  a  young  Figian  why 
he  had  killed  his  mother'  (3). 

A  few  pages  further  on,  the  same  author  adds, 
regarding  the  deplorable  state  of  morality  among 
savages  :  '  That  there  should  be  races  of  men  so 
deficient  in  moral  feeling  was  altogether  opposed 
to  the  preconceived  ideas  with  which  I  com- 
menced the  study  of  savage  life,  and  I  have 
arrived  at  the  conviction  by  slow  degrees,  and 
even  with  reluctance.  I  have,  however,  been 
forced  to  this  conclusion,  not  only  by  the  direct 
statements  of  travellers,  but  also  by  the  general 
tenor  of  their  remarks,  and  especially  by  the 
remarkable  absence  of  repentance  and  remorse 
among  the  lowest  races  of  men.'  Among  ourselves 
the  words  used  to  distinguish  right  and  wrong  are 
metaphors.  Right  originally  meant  '  straight,'  and 
wrong  meant  '  twisted.'  Language  existed,  there- 
fore, before  morality ;  for  if  moral  ideas  had 
preceded  language,  there  would  have  been  original 
words  to  stand  for  them.  Religion,  according  to 
Lubbock,  has  no  moral  aspect  or  influence  except 
among  the  more  advanced  races  of  men.  '  The 
deities  of  savages  are  evil,  not  good ;  they  may  be 
forced  into  compliance  with  the  wishes  of  man  ; 
they  generally  delight  in  bloody,  and  often  require 
human,  sacrifices  ;  they  are  mortal,  not  immortal  ; 
they  are  to  be  approached  by  dances  rather  than 
by  prayers ;  and  often  approve  what  we  call  vice 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  129 

rather  than  what  we  esteem  as  virtue.  In  fact, 
the  so-called  religion  of  the  lower  races  of  man- 
kind bears  somewhat  the  same  region  to  religion 
in  its  higher  forms  as  astrology  a.  o.  to  astronomy 
or  alchemy  to  chemistry  '  (3). 

Savages  have  few  general  ideas  of  any  kind,  as 
is  evidenced  by  the  almost  total  absence  among 
them  of  words  denoting  general  ideas.  Many  savage 
races  cannot  comprehend  numbers  greater  than 
five  or  six,  and  are  unable  to  make  the  simplest 
mathematical  computations  without  using  the 
fingers.  The  languages  of  savages  are  extremely 
rude,  words  being  freely  pieced  out  with  panto- 
mime. Savages  talk  with  difficulty  in  the  dark, 
because  of  their  great  reliance  on  gesture  in  con- 
versation. The  rich  vocabularies  of  the  languages 
of  Europe  and  America  have  grown  up  step  by 
step  with  the  evolution  of  European  and  American 
mind.  Every  language  is  an  evolution.  The 
languages  of  many  primitive  peoples  lack  the  verb 
to  be  entirely,  and  all  nouns  are  proper  nouns. 
Words  are  often  little  more  than  grunts  or  clucks, 
and  are  without  the  euphony  and  articulation  found 
in  the  languages  of  the  civilised.  Darwin  says 
that  the  language  of  the  Fuegians  sounds  like  a 
man  clearing  his  throat.  Not  only  every  language, 
but  every  word,  both  in  its  form  and  meaning, 
is  in  process  of  evolution.  Spirit,  for  instance, 
originally  meant  'blowing,'  understanding  meant 
'getting  ben:  ith,'  and  development  the  physical  act 
of  'unfolding.'  Words  are  continually  drifting 
from  their  original  meanings  under  the  stress  <sf 

9 


i3o         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

incessant  use,  as  ships  drag  their  anchors  in  a 
gale.  Those  words  that  are  exposed  to  common 
use  undergo  the  most  rapid  changes,  while  words 
sheltered  from  the  rush  of  human  affairs,  like 
harboured  ships,  hold  to  their  moorings  forever. 
Let,  for  instance,  once  meant  '  hinder ' ;  now  it 
means  '  allow.'  Bisect,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
word  of  rare  and  technical  use,  has  remained 
unaltered  in  significance  for  twenty  centuries. 

Even  our  alphabet  has  been  evolved.  The 
twenty- six  symbols  composing  it  have  been  eroded 
into  the  peculiar  forms  in  which  they  appear  at 
present  by  the  various  peoples  through  whose  hands 
they  have  come  to  us.  The  originals  were  picto- 
graphs  such  as  are  still  found  on  the  aged  monu- 
ments of  earth's  earliest  civilisations.  The  English 
got  their  alphabet  from  the  Romans,  who  obtained 
it,  along  with  almost  everything  else  they  had, 
from  the  Greeks.  The  Greeks  received  it  from  the 
Phenicians,  and  the  Phenicians  from  the  papyrus 
writers  of  Egypt,  who  in  turn  procured  it  from 
those  hieroglyph  chiselers  who  carved  their  curious 
literatures  '  the  granite  tombs  of  the  Nile  in  the 
remotest  dawn  of  human  history.  A,  the  first 
letter  of  our  alphabet,  is  a  figure  which  has  been 
evolved,  as  the  result  of  long  wear  and  tear,  from 
the  picture  of  an  eagle;  B  was  originally  the 
picture  of  a  crane ;  C  represents  a  throne ;  D  a 
hand ;  F  an  asp ;  H  a  sieve ;  K  a  bowl ;  L  a 
lioness  ;  M  an  owl ;  N  a  water-line ;  R  a  mouth ; 
5  a  garden ;  T  a  lassoo ;  X  a  chairback ;  and  Z 
a  duck. 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  131 

The  psychology  of  civilised  man,  though  derived 
from  that  of  the  savage,  and  hence  resembling  it 
fundamentally,  is,  nevertheless,  very  different  from 
it,  both  in  character  and  in  what  it  contains. 
The  mind  of  the  savage  is  rude,  unresourceful, 
vicious,  and  childlike,  while  that  of  the  civilised 
man  or  woman  may  be  overflowing  with  wisdom 
and  benignity.  This  gulf  has  not  been  covered 
by  a  stride,  but  by  the  slow  operation  of  the 
same  laws  of  Inheritance,  Variation,  and  Selec- 
tion by  which  all  progress  has  been  brought 
about. 

7.  Degeneration  is  a  necessary  part  of  the  pro- 
cess of  organic  evolution.  All  progress,  whether 
anatomical,  intellectual,  or  social,  takes  place 
through  selection,  and  selection  means  the  pining 
and  ultimate  passing  away  of  that  which  is  left.  In 
individual  evolution  it  is  organs,  ideas,  and  traits 
of  character  that  are  eliminated,  and  in  social 
evolution  it  is  customs  and  institutions.  One  of 
the  reasons  given  in  the  preceding  chapter  for 
the  belief  in  the  evolution  of  structures  is  the 
existence  in  man  and  other  animals  of  vestigial 
organs,  organs  which  in  lower  forms  of  life  are 
useful,  but  which  in  higher  forms  are  represented 
by  useless  or  even  injurious  remnants.  Similar 
remnants  are  found  in  the  psychology  of  man  and 
other  animals.  These  vestiges  of  mind  are  not  so 
easily  recognised  as  the  vestiges  of  structure, 
but  they  are  everywhere.  We  find  them  in  the 
antiquated  instincts  of  man  and  the  domestic 
animals,  in  the  silent  letters  and  worn-out  words 

9—3 


132         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

of  languages,  and  in  the  emaciated  remains  of 
abandoned  beliefs  and  institutions. 

The  hunting  and  fishing  instinct  of  civilised 
man  is  a  vestigial  instinct,  normal  in  the  savage, 
but  without  either  sense  or  decency  among  men 
devoted  to  industrial  pursuits.  The  savage  hunts 
and  fishes  because  he  is  hungry,  never  for  pastime ; 
civilised  men  and  women  do  so  because  they  are 
too  mechanical  to  assort  their  impulses.  Civilised 
man  is  a  mongrel,  a  cross  between  a  barbarian 
and  a  god.  His  psychology  is  a  compound  of  the 
jungle  and  the  sky.  In  their  loftier  moments, 
many  men  are  able  to  obscure  the  cruder  facts  of 
their  origin  and  to  put  into  temporary  operation 
those  more  splendid  processes  of  mind  which 
characterise  their  ideals.  But  even  the  most  civil- 
ised are  forever  haunted  by  the  returning  ghosts 
of  departed  propensities — propensities  which  grew 
up  in  ages  of  hate,  which  are  now  out-of-date,  but 
which  in  the  trying  tedium  of  daily  life  come 
back  and  usurp  the  high  places  in  human  nature. 
Revenge,  hate,  cruelty,  pugnacity,  selfishness, 
vanity,  and  the  like,  are  all  more  or  less  vestigial 
among  men  who  have  entered  seriously  on  the 
life  of  altruism.  Like  the  vermiform  appendix 
and  the  human  tail,  these  old  obsolete  parts  of  the 
human  mind  are  destined,  in  the  ripening  of  the 
ages,  to  waste  away  and  disappear  through  disuse. 

The  practice  of  the  dog  of  turning  round  two  or 
three  times  before  lying  down  is  in  response  to  an 
instinct  which  was  no  doubt  beneficial  to  it  in  its 
wild  life,  when  it  was  wont  to  make  its  bed  in  the 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  133 

grasses,  but  which  is  now  a  pure  waste  of  time. 
Darwin  records  it  as  a  fact,  that  he  has  himself 
seen  a  simple-minded  dog  turn  round  twenty  times 
before  lying  down.  The  sheep-killing  mania, 
which  sometimes  comes  over  dogs  when  three  or 
four  of  them  get  together  and  become  actuated  by 
the  '  mob '  spirit,  is  a  vestige  of  the  old  instihct  of 
the  carnivore  which  centuries  of  domestication 
have  not  yet  quite  erased.  Goodness,  if  too 
prolonged,  becomes  irksome  to  dogs  for  the  same 
reason  that  it  does  to  men.  Dogs  have  come 
from  savages  just  as  men  have,  and,  while  the 
civilised  nature  of  the  dog  is  more  constitutional 
than  that  of  civilised  man,  the  old  deposed  instincts 
mount  to  the  throne  once  in  awhile,  and  the  faith- 
ful collie  is  for  the  time  being  a  wolf  again.  The 
instinct  of  domestic  sheep  to  imitate  their  leader 
in  leaping  over  obstacles  is  another  probable 
survival  of  wild  life.  If  a  bar  or  other  obstacle 
be  placed  where  the  leader  of  a  flock  of  sheep  is 
compelled  to  leap  over  it,  and  the  obstacle  is  then 
removed,  the  entire  band  of  followers  will  leap  at 
the  same  place  regardless  of  the  fact  that  the 
obstruction  is  no  longer  there.  No  other  animals 
do  this.  The  instinct  is  probably  a  survival  of 
wild  life,  when  these  animals,  pursued  by  their 
enemies  over  chasms  and  precipices,  were  com- 
pelled to  imitate  in  the  flight  those  in  front  of 
them  in  order  to  live.  Darwin  thinks  the  donkey 
shows  its  aboriginal  desert  nature  in  its  aversion 
for  crossing  the  smallest  stream,  and  its  relish  for 
rolling  in  the  dust.  The  same  aversion  for  every- 


134         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

thing  aquatic  exists  also  in  the  camel.  Quails  kept 
vin  captivity,  I  am  told,  persist  in  scratching  at 
the  pan  when  they  are  feeding,  just  as  they  would 
need  to  do,  and  were  accustomed  to  do,  among  the 
leaves  and  grasses  of  the  groves.  The  restlessness 
of  cage-birds  and  domestic  fowls  at  migrating 
time,  the  mimic  dipping  and  sporting  of  ducks 
when  confined  to  a  terrestrial  habitat,  the  grave 
marshalling  of  geese  by  the  chief  gander  of  the 
band,  the  ferocity  of  cows,  ewes,  and  the  females 
of  other  domestic  animals  during  the  first  few 
days  of  motherhood,  the  hunting  instinct  of  dogs 
kept  as  shepherds  and  pets,  the  squatting  of 
young  pigs  when  suddenly  alarmed — all  of  these 
are  vestigial  instincts,  functional  in  the  wild  state, 
but  now  useless  and  absurd. 

The  silent  letters  and  superannuated  words  and 
phrases  found  everywhere  in  literature  are  the 
vestigial  parts  of  language.  Every  silent  letter 
was  originally  sounded,  and  every  obsolete  word 
was  at  one  time  used.  In  the  French  word,  temps, 
for  instance,  which  means  'time,'  neither  the  p 
nor  the  s  is  sounded.  But  in  the  Latin  word 
tempus,  from  which  the  French  word  is  derived, 
all  of  the  letters  are  sounded. 

Man  has  been  defined  as  a  creature  of  habit. 
As  he  has  done  a  thing  once,  or  as  his  ancestors 
have  done  a  thing,  so  he  does  it  again.  By 
precept  and  example  he  transmits  to  each  new 
generation  the  customs,  beliefs,  and  points  of 
view  which  he  has  invented.  Social  changes  take 
place  with  extreme  moderation.  The  drowsy  ages 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  135 

take  plenty  of  time  to  get  anywhere.  Civilisation 
is  lazy,  deliberate,  unimpassioned.  It  loafs  and 
hesitates.  It  holds  on  to  the  past.  Living  civilisa- 
tions always  drag  behind  them  a  trail  of  traditions 
from  dead  civilisations.  Religions  and  philosophies 
change,  and  creeds  and  governments  flow  into 
strange  and  undreamed-of  forms ;  but  their  person- 
alities survive,  their  souls  live  on,  their  remnants, 
transmitted  as  traditions  from  generation  to 
generation,  defy  the  meddlings  of  innovators. 
Hence  in  every  society  there  are  forms  and  cere- 
monies, laws  and  customs,  games  and  symbols, 
etc.,  which  have  been  completely  diverted  from 
their  original  purposes,  or  which  have  become 
so  reduced  in  importance  as  to  be  of  no  use. 
Spencer  has  shown  that  the  forms  of  salutation  in 
vogue  among  civilised  societies  are  the  vestiges  of 
primitive  ceremonial  used  to  denote  submission. 
The  May  Day  festivals  with  which  the  opening 
spring  is  usually  hailed  are  the  much-modified 
survivals  of  pagan  festivals  in  honour  of  plant  and 
animal  fecundity.  Superstition  and  folklore  are 
vestigial  opinions.  The  gorgeous  Easter  egg  is  a 
survival  of  a  dawn  myth  older  than  the  Pyramids, 
and  our  Christmas  dinner  is  a  reminiscence  of  a 
cannibal  carnival  celebrating  the  turning  back 
of  the  sun  at  the  winter  solstice  (Brinton).  In 
the  English  government,  where  democracy  has 
in  recent  centuries  made  such  inroads  on  the 
monarchy,  there  are  numerous  examples  of  vesti- 
gial institutions — institutions  which  continue  to 
exist  purely  because  they  have  existed  in  the.  past, 


136          THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

but  which  were  functional  a  few  centuries  ago. 
The  supreme  office  itself  is  one  of  these.  The 
King  represents  the  petered-out  tail-end  of  a  privi- 
lege which  in  the  time  of  the  early  Stuarts  was 
almost  unlimited.  Similar  vestiges  exist  in  the 
United  States,  where  the  national  spirit  during 
the  last  century  and  a  half  has  so  completely 
wiped  out  colonialism.  Such  are  the  Town 
Meetings  of  Boston  and  of  New  Haven.  The 
earliest  form  of  human  marriage  was  marriage  by 
capture.  The  man  stole  the  woman  and  carried  her 
away  by  force.  This  form  of  marriage  was  in  the 
course  of  evolution  succeeded  by  marriage  through 
purchase.  A  man  anxious  to  become  a  husband 
could  do  so  by  paying  to  the  father  a  stipulated 
amount  of  cash  or  cattle  for  his  daughter.  This 
second  form  of  marriage  finally  evolved  into  mar- 
riage arranged  by  direct  and  peaceful  negotiation 
between  the  prospective  husband  and  wife.  This 
is  the  form  most  commonly  employed  at  the 
present  time  among  the  more  advanced  societies 
of  men.  But  in  the  ceremonies  which  surround 
the  nuptial  event  among  civilised  peoples  survive 
vestiges  of  many  of  the  facts  associated  with 
aboriginal  marriages.  A  marriage  in  high  life  is 
a  sort  of  epitome  of  the  evolution  of  the  institu- 
tion. The  coyness  and  hesitancy  of  the  woman 
in  accepting  the  offers  of  her  proposed  spouse  are 
the  lineal  descendants  of  the  original  reluctance 
of  her  savage  sisters.  The  wedding-ring  is  the 
old  token  accepted  by  the  woman  when  she 
gave  her  pledge  of  bondage.  The  coming  of  the 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  137 

groom  with  his  aids  to  the  marriage  is  a  figura- 
tive marauding  expedition.  The  honeymoon  is 
the  abduction.  And  the  charivari  and  missile- 
throwing  indulged  in  by  friends  and  relatives  on 
the  departure  of  the  wedded  twain  is  a  good- 
humoured  counterfeit  of  the  armed  protest  made 
by  relatives  of  old  when  a  bride-snatcher  came 
among  them  (4). 

The  vestiges  found  everywhere  in  the  mental 
and  social  phenomena  of  man  and  other  animals 
have  arisen  as  necessary  facts  in  the  process  of 
mental  evolution.  They  are  the  vermiform  appen- 
dices of  the  mind. 

8.  One  of  the  strongest  reasons  for  a  belief  in 
the  physical  evolution  of  animal  species  is  that 
furnished  by  individual  evolution.  Each  individual 
animal  recapitulates  in  a  wonderful  manner  the 
phylogenesis  of  its  species.  Now,  it  is  extremely 
significant  that  a  similar  parallel  exists  in  the 
case  of  mental  evolution.  Each  individual  mind 
ascends  through  a  series  of  mental  faculties  which 
epitomises  in  a  remarkable  manner  the  psycho- 
genesis  of  the  animal  kingdom. 

The  human  child  is  not  born  with  a  full-grown 
mind  any  more  than  with  a  full-grown  body.  It 
grows.  It  exfoliates.  It  ripens  with  the  years. 
It  begins  in  infancy  at  the  zero-point,  and  in 
manhood  or  womanhood  may  blaze  with  genius 
and  philanthropy. 

But  the  mind  of  the  child  not  only  unfolds:  it 
unfolds  in  a  certain  order,  the  more  complex 
parts  and  the  more  civilised  emotions  invariably 


138         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

appearing  last.  The  initial  powers  of  the  new- 
born babe  are  those  of  sensation  and  perception. 
The  babe  cannot  think.  It  has  no  feeling  of 
fear,  no  affection,  no  sympathy,  and  no  shame. 
It  can  see,  and  hear,  and  taste,  and  feel  pain 
and  satisfaction — and  these  are  about  all.  Even 
these  are  vague  and  confused.  In  a  week  the 
perceptions  are  more  sharp  and  vivid,  more 
distinct  and  orderly.  Memory  arises.  Memory 
is  the  power  of  reproducing  past  impressions.  At 
three  weeks  the  emotions  begin  to  sprout.  The 
first  to  make  their  appearance  are  fear  and 
surprise.  When  the  babe  is  seven  weeks  old  the 
social  affections  show  themselves,  and  the  simplest 
acts  of  association  are  performed.  At  the  age  of 
twelve  weeks  jealousy  and  anger  may  be  expected, 
together  with  simple  exhibitions  of  association 
by  similarity.  At  fourteen  weeks  affection  and 
reason  dawn.  Sympathy  germinates  at  about  the 
age  of  five  months;  pride  and  resentment  ger- 
minate at  eight  months ;  grief,  hate,  and  benevo- 
lence at  ten  months ;  and  shame  and  remorse  at 
fifteen  months. 

Now,  the  remarkable  thing  about  this  is  that 
this  is  the  order,  or  very  much  like  the  order,  in 
which  mind  in  the  animal  kingdom  as  a  whole 
has  apparently  evolved.  The  lower  orders  of 
animal  life  have  none  of  the  higher  emotions  and 
none  of  the  more  complicated  processes  of  mind. 
There  is  no  shame  in  the  reptile,  no  dissimulation 
in  the  fish,  no  sympathy  in  the  mollusk,  and  no 
memory  in  the  sponge.  Memory  dawns  in  the 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  139 

echinoderms,  or  somewhere  near  the  radiate  stage 
of  development,  and  fear  and  surprise  in  the 
worms.  Pugnacity  makes  its  appearance  in  the 
insects,  imagination  in  the  spiders,  and  jealousy 
in  the  fishes.  Pride,  emulation,  and  resentment 
originate  in  the  birds ;  grief  and  hate  in  the 
carnivora;  shame  and  remorse  among  dogs  and 
monkeys ;  and  superstition  in  the  savage  (i). 

It  is  also  an  important  fact  bearing  on  the 
general  problem  of  evolution,  that  the  civilised 
child,  from  about  the  age  of  one  on,  is  a  sort  of 
synopsis,  rude  but  unmistakable,  of  the  historic 
evolution  of  the  human  race.  The  child  is  a 
savage.  It  has  the  emotions  of  the  savage,  the 
savage's  conceptions  of  the  world,  and  the  desires, 
pastimes,  and  ambitions  of  the  savage.  It  hates 
work,  and  takes  delight  in  hunting,  fishing,  fight- 
ing, and  loafing,  like  other  savages.  The  hero  of 
the  child  is  the  bully,  just  as  the  demigod  of  primi- 
tive man  is  a  blood-letting  Caesar  or  Achilles. 
The  children  of  the  civilised  are  savages — some 
more  so  than  others — and  if  they  ever  become 
civilised — some  do,  and  some  do  not — they  do  so 
through  a  process  of  rectification  and  selection 
similar  to  that  through  which  the  Aryan  races 
have  passed  during  the  ages  of  human  history. 

There  is  a  similar  evolution  in  the  young  of 
other  animals,  especially  of  the  higher  animals. 
Each  individual  begins  in  a  perfectly  mindless 
form,  and  grows  mentally  as  it  develops  physically. 
The  young  puppy  has  a  very  different  thinking 
and  feeling  apparatus  from  the  grown-up  mastiff. 


I4o         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

It  is  controlled  almost  exclusively  by  sense  and 
instinct.  It  is  devoid  of  common-sense,  and 
divides  its  time  impartially  between  play  and 
sleep.  It  is  easily  frightened,  and  cries  at  every 
little  thing.  It  has  the  rollicking,  awkward, 
irresponsible  personality  of  a  boy  of  six.  About 
the  same  thing  is  true  of  kittens,  colts,  calves, 
bear  cubs,  the  whelps  of  wolves,  and  other  young 
quadrupeds.  A  kitten  will  chase  shadows,  try  to 
catch  flies  crawling  on  the  other  side  of  a  window- 
pane,  sit  and  watch  in  wonder  the  moving  objects 
about  it,  and  do  many  other  things  which  it  never 
thinks  of  doing  when  it  has  grown  to  be  a  wise 
and  sophisticated  puss  trained  in  the  ways  of 
the  world  about  it.  Doghood,  cathood,  and 
horsehood,  like  manhood  and  womanhood,  are 
the  ripened  products  of  long  processes  of  growth 
and  exfoliation. 

The  parallel  is,  of  course,  imperfect.  There  are 
many  abbreviations,  many  breaks  and  ambiguities, 
in  the  summary  presented  by  the  individual  mind 
of  the  evolution  of  the  race.  And,  in  the  present 
state  of  psychogeny,  only  the  barest  outline  can  be 
traced.  But  enough  is  known  to  render  the  fact 
unquestionable. 

9.  If  human  mind  has  been  evolved,  it  is  logical 
to  expect  to  find  in  other  animals,  especially  in 
those  more  closely  resembling  ourselves  in  struc- 
ture, mind  elements  similar  to  those  we  find  in 
ourselves.*  And  this  is  precisely  what  we  do  find. 

*  This  topic  is  more  fully  presented  in  section  IV.  of  this 
chapter. 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  141 

The  same  great  trunk  impulses  that  animate  men 
animate  also  those  more  rudimentary  but  not  less 
real  individuals  below  and  around  men.  The 
great  primary  facts  of  sex,  of  self-preservation,  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  of  life  and  death,  of  egoism  and 
altruism,  of  motherhood,  of  alimentation,  etc. — 
all  of  these  are  found  everywhere,  down  almost  to 
the  very  threshold  of  organic  life.  And  they  are 
the  antecedents  of  the  same  great  tendencies  as 
those  that  control  the  lives  of  men.  It  is  often 
supposed  by  the  superficial  that  the  facts  of  sex 
and  alimentation,  which  are  so  prominent  in  other 
animals,  have  been  relegated  to  a  very  subordinate 
place  in  the  nature  of  man.  But  nothing  could 
be  much  farther  from  the  truth.  It  has  been  said 
that  there  are  only  two  things  that  will  induce  the 
typical  African  or  Australian  to  undergo  prolonged 
labour — hunger  and  the  sex  appetite.  It  is  probable 
that  men — not  only  primitive  men,  but  the  most 
evolved  races,  including  even  poets  and  philoso- 
phers— will  do  more  desperate  and  idiotic  things 
and  undergo  more  trying  experiences  when 
actuated  by  the  sex  impulse  than  from  the  effects 
of  any  other  impulse  in  human  nature.  This 
impulse  is  especially  overmastering  in  races  like 
the  Italian  and  Spanish,  and  has  been  mentioned 
by  ethnologists  as  a  probable  factor  in  the  deteri- 
oration of  these  races.  The  sentiments  of  love, 
marital  affection,  and  family  life  control  mankind 
more  completely  than  any  other  motives.  And 
next  to  these  comes  hunger.  Let  anyone  who 
imagines  that  only  the  non-human  creatures  are 


142         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

carnal  observe  with  what  uniformity  almost  every 
function  in  both  savage  and  civilised  life  gravitates 
toward  eating  and  drinking.  If  it  is  a  picnic, 
a  convention,  a  national  holiday,  a  Christmas 
celebration,  a  meeting  of  a  fraternal  society,  a 
thanksgiving  ceremony,  or  what  not,  eating  is  one 
of  the  main  things,  and  the  one  exercise  into 
which  four-fifths  of  those  present  probably  enter 
with  the  greatest  enthusiasm. 

The  human  soul  is  the  blossom,  not  the 
beginning,  of  psychic  evolution.  Mother -love 
compassionated  infancy  long  before  a  babe  came 
from  the  stricken  loins  of  woman.  The  inhabitants 
of  the  earth  had  been  seeking  pleasure  and  seeking 
to  avoid  pain,  and  seeking  ever  with  the  same  sad 
futility,  long  before  man  with  his  retinue  of  puny 
philosophies  strutted  upon  the  scene.  Hate 
poisoned  the  cisterns  of  the  sea  and  dropped  its 
pollutions  through  the  steaming  spaces  ages  before 
there  was  malice  among  men.  Altruism  is  older 
than  the  mountains,  and  selfishness  hardened  the 
living  heart  before  the  continents  were  lifted. 
There  was  wonder  in  the  woods  and  in  the  wild 
heart  of  the  fastnesses  before  there  were  wailings 
in  synagogues  and  genuflections  about  altar  piles. 
The  frogs,  crickets,  and  birds  had  been  singing  love 
a  thousand  generations  and  more  when  the  first 
amoroso  knelt  in  dulcet  descant  to  a  beribboned 
Venus.  Human  nature  is  not  an  article  of  divine 
manufacture,  any  more  than  is  the  human  form. 
It  came  out  of  the  breast  of  the  bird,  out  of  the 
soul  of  the  quadruped.  The  human  heart  does 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  143 

not  draw  back  from  the  mysterious  dissolutions  of 
death  more  earnestly  than  does  the  hare  that  flees 
before  resounding  packs  or  the  wild-fowl  that 
reddens  the  reeds  with  its  flounderings.  Bower- 
birds  build  their  nestside  resorts,  decorate  them 
with  gay  feathers,  and  surround  them  with  grounds 
ornamented  with  bright  stones  and  shells,  for 
identically  the  same  reason  as  human  beings 
design  drawing-rooms,  hang  them  with  tapestries, 
and  surround  them  with  ornamented  lawns.  The 
scarlet  waistcoat  of  the  robin  and  the  flaming 
dresses  of  tanagers  and  humming-birds,  which 
seem,  as  they  flash  through  the  forest  aisles,  like 
shafts  of  cardinal-fire,  serve  the  same  vanities  and 
minister  to  the  same  instincts  as  the  plumage  of 
the  dandy  and  the  tints  and  gewgaws  of  gorgeous 
dames.  Art  is  largely  a  manifestation  of  sex,  and 
it  is  about  as  old  and  about  as  persistent  as  this 
venerable  impulse.  How  did  Darwin's  dog  know 
his  master  on  his  master's  return  from  a  five-years' 
trip  around  the  world  ?  Just  as  the  boy  remembers 
where  the  strawberries  grow  and  Jlie  philosopher 
recalls  his  facts — by  that  power  of  the  brain  to 
retain  and  to  reproduce  past  impressions.  Why 
does  the  thinker  search  his  soul  for  new  theories 
and  the  spaces  for  new  stars?  For  the  same 
reason  that  the  child  asks  questions  and  the 
monkey  picks  to  pieces  its  toys.  What  is  reason  ? 
A  habit  of  wise  men — an  expedient  of  ants — a 
mania  the  fools  of  all  ages  are  free  from.  All 
of  the  activities  of  men,  however  imposing  or 
peculiar,  are  but  elaborations  in  one  way  or 


I44         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

another  of  the  humble  doings  of  the  animalcule, 
whose  home  is  a  water-drop  and  whose  existence 
can  be  discovered  by  human  senses  only  by  the 
aid  of  instruments. 

10.  Mind  has  evolved  because  the  universe  has 
evolved.  Whether  mind  is  a  part  of  the  universe, 
or  all  of  it,  or  only  an  attribute  of  it,  it  is,  in  any 
case,  inextricably  mixed  up  with  it.  And,  since  the 
universe  as  a  whole  has  evolved,  it  is  improbable 
that  any  part  of  it  or  anything  pertaining  to  it 
has  remained  impassive  to  the  general  tendency. 
There  are  no  solids.  Nothing  stands.  The  whole 
universe  is  in  a  state  of  fluidity.  Even  the 
'  eternal  hills,'  the  '  u/ichanging  continents,'  and 
the  '  everlasting  stars,'  are  flowing,  flowing  ever, 
slowly  but  ceaselessly,  from  form  to  form.  So 
is  mind.  Indeed,  if  there  is  anywhere  in  the  folds 
of  creation  a  being  such  as  the  one  whom  man 
has  long  accused  of  having  brought  the  universe 
into  existence,  we  may  rest  assured  that  even  he 
is  not  sitting  passively  apart  from  the  enormous 
enterprise  which  he  has  himself  inaugurated. 

The  evidence  is  conclusive.  The  evolution  of 
mind  is  supported  by  a  series  of  facts  not  less 
incontrovertible  and  convincing  than  that  by 
which  physical  evolution  is  established.  The 
data  of  mental  evolution  are  not  quite  so  definite 
and  plentiful  as  those  of  physical  evolution.  But 
this  is  due  to  the  greater  intangibility  of  mental 
phenomena  and  to  the  backward  condition  of  the 
psychological  sciences,  especially  of  comparative 
psychology.  Mental  phenomena  are  always  more 


PSYCHICAL  EVOLUTION  14 

difficult  to  deal  with  than  material  phenomena, 
and  hence  are  always  more  tardily  attended  to  in 
the  application  of  any  theory.  But  taking  every- 
thing into  account,  including  the  close  connection 
between  physical  and  psychical  phenomena,  it 
may  be  asserted  that  it  is  not  more  certain  that 
the  physical  structure  of  man  has  been  derived 
from  sub-human  forms  of  life  than  it  is  that  the 
human  mind  has  also  been  similarly  derived. 

Man  is  the  adult  of  long  evolution.  The  human 
soul  has  ancestors  and  consanguinities  just  as  the 
body  has.  It  is  just  as  reasonable  to  suppose 
that  the  human  physiology,  with  its  definitely 
elaborated  tissues,  organs,  and  systems,  is  unrelated 
to  the  physiology  of  vertebrates  in  general,  and 
through  vertebrate  physiology  to  the  physiology 
of  invertebrates,  as  to  suppose  that  the  states 
and  impulses  constituting  human  nature  and  con- 
sciousness began  to  exist  in  the  anthropic  type  of 
anatomy  and  are  unrelated  to  the  states  and  im- 
pulses of  vertebrate  consciousness  in  general,  and 
through  vertebrate  consciousness  to  those  remoter 
types  of  sentiency  lying  away  at  the  threshold 
of  organic  life.  Human  psychology  is  a  part  of 
universal  psychology.  It  has  been  evolved.  It 
has  been  evolved  according  to  the  same  laws  of 
heredity  and  adaptation  as  have  physiological 
structures.  And  it  is  just-  as  impossible  to  under- 
stand human  nature  and  psychology  unaided  by 
those  wider  prospects  of  universal  psychology  as 
it  is  to  understand  the  facts  of  human  physiology 
unaided  by  analogous  universalisations. 

10 


146         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

III.  The  Common-sense  View. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  learned  in 
Darwinian  science  in  order  to  know  that  non- 
human  beings  have  souls.  Just  the  ordinary 
observation  of  them  in  their  daily  lives  about  us 
— in  their  comings  and  goings  and  doings — is 
sufficient  to  convince  any  person  of  discernment 
that  they  are  beings  with  joys  and  sorrows,  desires 
and  capabilities,  similar  to  our  own.  No  human 
being  with  a  conscientious  desire  to  learn  the 
truth  can  associate  intimately  day  after  day  with 
these  people — associate  with  them  as  he  himself 
would  desire  to  be  associated  with  in  order  to 
be  interpreted,  without  presumption  or  reserve, 
in  a  kind,  honest,  straightforward,  magnanimous 
manner;  make  them  his  friends  and  really  enter 
into  their  inmost  lives — without  realising  that 
they  are  almost  unknown  by  human  beings,  that 
they  are  constantly  and  criminally  misunderstood, 
and  that  they  are  in  reality  beings  actuated  by 
substantially  the  same  impulses  and  terrorised  by 
approximately  the  same  experiences  as  we  our- 
selves. They  eat  and  sleep,  seek  pleasure  and  try 
to  avoid  pain,  cling  valorously  to  life,  experience 
health  and  disease,  get  seasick,  suffer  hunger  and 
thirst,  co-operate  with  each  other,  build  homes, 
reproduce  themselves,  love  and  provide  for  their 
children,  feeding,  defending,  and  educating  them, 
contend  against  enemies,  contract  habits,  remem- 
ber and  forget,  learn  from  experience,  have  friends 
and  favourites  and  pastimes,  appreciate  kindness, 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       147 

commit  crimes,  dream  dreams,  cry  out  in  distress, 
are  affected  by  alcohol,  opium,  strychnine,  and 
other  drugs,  see,  hear,  smell,  taste,  and  feel,  are 
industrious,  provident  and  cleanly,  have  languages, 
risk  their  lives  for  others,  manifest  ingenuity, 
individuality,  fidelity,  affection,  gratitude,  heroism, 
sorrow,  sexuality,  self-control,  fear,  love,  hate, 
pride,  suspicion,  jealousy,  joy,  reason,  resent- 
ment, selfishness,  curiosity,  memory,  imagination, 
remorse — all  of  these  things,  and  scores  of  others, 
the  same  as  human  beings  do. 

The  anthropoid  races  have  the  same  emotions 
and  the  same  ways  of  expressing  those  emotions 
as  human  beings  have.  They  laugh  in  joy,  whine 
in  distress,  shed  tears,  pout  and  apologise,  and  get 
angry  when  they  are  laughed  at.  They  protrude 
their  lips  when  sulky  or  pouting,  stare  with  wide- 
open  eyes  in  astonishment,  and  look  downcast 
when  melancholy  or  insulted.  When  they  laugh, 
they  draw  back  the  corners  of  their  mouth  and 
expose  their  teeth,  their  eyes  sparkle,  their  lower 
eyelids  wrinkle,  and  they  utter  chuckling  sounds, 
just  as  human  beings  do  (5).  They  have  strong 
sympathy  for  their  sick  and  wounded,  and  manifest 
toward  their  friends,  and  especially  toward  the 
members  of  their  own  family,  a  devotion  scarcely 
equalled  among  the  lowest  races  of  mankind. 
They  use  rude  tools,  such  as  clubs  and  sticks,  and 
resort  to  cunning  and  deliberation  to  accomplish 
their  ends.  The  orang,  when  pursued,  will  throw 
sticks  at  his  pursuers,  and  when  wounded,  and 
the  wound  does  not  prove  instantly  fatal,  will 

IO — 2 


148         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

sometimes  press  his  hand  upon  the  wound  or 
apply  grass  and  leaves  to  stop  the  flow  of  blood. 
The  children  of  anthropoids  wrestle  with  each 
other,  and  chase  and  throw  each  other,  just  as  do 
the  juveniles  of  human  households.  The  gorilla, 
chimpanzee,  and  orang  all  build  for  themselves 
lodges  made  of  broken  boughs  and  leaves  in  which 
to  sleep  at  night.  These  lodges,  rude  though  they 
are,  are  not  inferior  to  the  habitations  of  many 
primitive  men.  The  Pur  is,  who  live  naked  in  the 
depths  of  the  Brazilian  forests,  do  not  even  have 
huts  to  live  in,  only  screens  made  by  setting  up 
huge  palm-leaves  against  a  cross-pole  (6).  Some 
of  the  African  tribes  are  said  to  live  largely  in 
caves  and  the  crevices  of  rocks.  This  is  the  case 
with  many  primitive  men.  According  to  a  writer 
in  the  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute 
of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  (January,  1902), 
'  common  forms  of  dwelling  among  the  wild  tribes 
of  the  Malay  Peninsula  are  rock-shelters  (some- 
times caves,  but  more  commonly  natural  recesses 
under  overhanging  ledges)  and  leaf-shelters,  which 
are  sometimes  formed  on  the  ground  and  some- 
times in  the  branches  of  trees.  The  simplest 
form  of  these  leaf- shelters  consists  of  a  single 
palm-leaf  planted  in  the  ground  to  afford  the 
wanderer  some  slight  shelter  for  the  night.' 

When  they  sleep,  the  anthropoids  sometimes  lie 
stretched  out,  man-like,  on  their  backs,  and  some- 
times they  lie  on  their  side  with  their  hand  under 
their  head  for  a  pillow.  The  orang  retires  about 
five  or  six  o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  does  not  rise 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       149 

until  the  morning  sun  has  dissipated  the  mists  of 
the  forest.  The  gorilla  and  chimpanzee  seem  to 
mate  for  life.  The  former  lives,  as  a  rule,  in 
single  families,  each  family  consisting  of  a  male 
and  a  female  and  their  children.  During  the  day 
this  primitive  family  roams  through  the  forests  of 
equatorial  Africa  in  search  of  food.  They  live  on 
fruits  and  nuts  and  the  tender  shoots  and  leaves 
of  plants.  They  are  especially  fond  of  sugar-cane, 
which  they  eat  in  small-boy  fashion  by  chewing 
and  discarding  the  juiceless  pulp.  Among  the 
foods  of  the  gorilla  is  a  walnut-like  nut  which  it 
cracks  with  stones.  As  evening  comes  on,  the 
head  of  the  family  selects  a  sleeping-place  for  the 
night.  This  is  usually  some  low  tree  with  a 
dense  growth  at  the  top,  and  protected  as  much  as 
possible  by  higher  trees  from  the  chilly  night 
wind.  Here,  on  a  bed  of  broken  branches  and 
leaves,  the  mother  and  little  ones  go  to  sleep, 
while  the  father  devotedly  crouches  at  the  foot  of 
the  tree,  with  his  back  against  the  trunk  to  guard 
his  family  from  leopards  and  other  nocturnal 
cut-throats  who  eat  apes  (7).  When  the  weather 
is  stormy,  they  cover  themselves  with  broad 
pandanus  leaves  to  keep  off  the  rain.  Koppenfels 
relates  an  incident  of  a  gorilla  family  which  makes 
one  think  of  things  he  sometimes  sees  among  men. 
The  family  consisted  of  the  parents  and  two 
children.  It  was  meal-time.  The  head  of  the 
family  reposed  majestically  on  the  ground,  while 
the  wife  and  children  hustled  for  fruits  for  him 
in  a  near-by  tree.  If  they  were  not  sufficiently 


150         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

nimble  about  it,  or  if  they  were  so  wanton  as  to 
take  a  bite  themselves,  the  paterfamilias  growled 
and  gave  them  a  cuff  on  the  head  (7).  Notwith- 
standing the  sensational  tales  of  the  ferocity  of 
this  being,  the  gorilla  never  attacks  anyone  at 
any  time  unless  he  is  molested  (7).  He  much 
prefers  to  attend  to  his  own  business.  But  if  he 
is  not  allowed  to  do  so,  if  he  is  attacked,  he 
is  as  fearless  as  a  machine.  He  approaches  his 
antagonist  walking  upright  and  beating  his  breast 
with  his  fists.  He  presents  one  of  the  most 
terrifying  of  all  spectacles,  as,  with  gleaming 
eyes,  hair  erect,  and  resounding  yells,  he  bears 
down  on  the  object  of  his  resentment.  The 
natives  fear  the  gorilla  more  than  they  fear  any 
other  animal. 

The  chimpanzee  in  his  native  wilds  lives  in 
small  tribes  consisting  of  a  few  families  each. 
Like  the  gorilla,  it  passes  the  most  of  its  time  on 
the  ground,  going  among  the  trees  only  for  food 
or  sleep.  It  builds  a  sleeping-place  at  night  in 
the  trees,  as  in  the  case  of  the  gorilla.  Brehm, 
who  brought  up  a  number  of  chimpanzees  in  his 
own  home  as  comrades  and  playmates  of  his 
children,  and  who  studied  them  and  associated 
with  them  for  years,  says:  'The  chimpanzee  is 
not  only  one  of  the  cleverest  of  all  creatures,  but 
a  being  capable  of  deliberation  and  judgment. 
Everything  he  does  is  done  consciously  and 
deliberately.  He  looks  upon  all  other  animals, 
except  man,  as  very  inferior  to  himself.  He 
treats  children  entirely  different  from  grown-up 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       151 

people.  The  latter  he  respects;  the  former  he 
looks  upon  as  comrades  and  equals.  He  is  not 
merely  inquisitive:  he  is  greedy  for  knowledge. 
He  can  draw  conclusions,  can  reason  from  one 
thing  to  another,  and  apply  the  results  of  experi- 
ence to  new  circumstances.  He  is  cunning,  even 
wily,  has  flashes  of  humour,  indulges  in  practical 
jokes,  manifests  moods,  and  is  entertained  in  one 
company  and  bored  in  another.  He  is  self-willed 
but  not  stubborn,  good-natured  but  not  wanting 
in  independence.  He  expresses  his  emotions  like 
a  human  being.  In  sickness  he  behaves  like  one 
in  despair,  distorts  his  face,  groans,  stamps,  and 
tears  his  hair.  He  learns  very  easily  whatever  is 
taught  him,  as,  for  instance,  to  sit  upright  at 
table,  to  eat  with  knife  and  fork  and  spoon,  to 
drink  from  a  glass  or  cup,  to  stir  the  sugar  in  his 
tea,  to  use  a  napkin,  to  wear  clothes,  to  sleep  in 
a  bed,  and  so  on.  Exceedingly  appreciative  of 
every  caress,  he  is  equally  sensitive  to  blame  and 
unkindness.  He  is  capable  of  deep  gratitude,  and 
he  expresses  it  by  shaking  hands  or  kissing  with- 
out being  asked  to  do  so.  He  behaves  toward 
infants  with  touching  tenderness.  The  behaviour 
of  a  sick  and  suffering  chimpanzee  is  most  pathetic. 
Begging  piteously,  almost  humanly,  he  looks  into 
his  master's  face,  receives  every  attempt  to  help 
him  with  warm  thanks,  and  soon  looks  upon  his 
physician  as  a  benefactor,  holding  out  his  arm  to 
him,  stretching  out  his  tongue  whenever  told,  and 
even  doing  so  of  his  own  accord  ^after  a  few 
visits  from  his  physician.  He  swallows  medicines 


152         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

readily,  and  even  submits  to  surgical  operations — 
in  short,  behaves  very  like  a  human  patient  in 
similar  circumstances.  As  his  end  approaches, 
he  becomes  more  gentle,  and  the  nobler  traits  of 
his  character  stand  out  prominently  '  (8). 

The  New  York  Herald,  in  its  issue  of  July  2, 
1901,  contained  an  account  of  the  death  of  Charle- 
magne, a  chimpanzee  who  died  a  short  time  before 
at  Grenoble,  France.  This  anthropoid  at  the 
time  of  his  death  was  the  most  popular  inhabitant 
of  the  town.  His  popularity  was  due  to  his 
good-nature  and  intelligence,  and  especially  to  the 
fact  that  a  few  years  before  his  death  he  had  saved 
a  child  from  drowning  in  a  well.  The  ape  saw 
the  child  fall,  and  without  a  moment's  hesitation 
climbed  down  the  rope  used  for  the  buckets,  seized 
the  child,  and  climbed  out  again  by  the  same  rope 
by  which  he  had  descended.  The  people  of  the 
town  thought  so  much  of  him  that  they  followed 
his  remains  to  the  grave,  and  the  municipal  council 
voted  to  erect  a  bronze  statue  to  his  memory. 

A  heartless  hunter — maybe  one  of  those  assassins 
who  fill  the  wilds  with  widows  and  orphans  in  the 
name  of  Science — tells  of  the  murder  of  a  mother 
chimpanzee  and  her  baby  in  Africa.  The  mother 
was  high  up  in  a  tree  with  her  little  one  in  her 
arms.  She  watched  intently,  and  with  signs  of 
the  greatest  anxiety,  the  hunter  as  he  moved  about 
beneath,  and  when  he  took  aim  at  her  the  poor 
doomed  thing  motioned  to  him  with  her  hand 
precisely  in  the  manner  of  a  human  being,  to  have 
him  desist  and  go  away. 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       153 

According  to  Emin  Pasha,  who  was  for  a 
number  of  years  Governor  of  an  Egyptian  pro- 
vince on  the  Upper  Nile,  and  whom  Stanley  made 
his  last  expedition  to  '  rescue,'  chimpanzees  some- 
times make  use  of  fire.  He  told  Stanley  that, 
when  a  tribe  of  chimpanzees  who  resided  in  a 
forest  near  his  camp  came  at  night  to  get  fruit 
from  the  orchards,  they  always  came  bearing 
torches  to  light  them  on  their  way.  '  If  I  had  not 
seen  it  with  my  own  eyes,'  he  declares,  '  I  never 
could  have  believed  that  these  beings  have  the 
power  of  making  fire'  (9).  This  same  authority 
relates  that  on  one  occasion  a  band  of  chimpanzees 
descended  upon  his  camp  and  carried  off  a  drum. 
The  marauders  went  away  in  great  glee,  beating 
the  drum  as  they  retreated.  He  says  he  heard 
them  several  times  after  that,  at  night,  beating 
their  drum,  in  the  forest. 

The  monkeys  are  little  inferior  to  the  man-like 
races  in  their  intelligence  and  in  the  general  simi- 
larity of  their  feelings  and  instincts  to  those  of 
men.  Monkeys  live  in  tribes,  and  at  the  head  of 
each  tribe  is  an  old  male  chief  who  has  won 
his  place  by  his  strength,  courage,  and  ability. 
Monkeys  have  excellent  memories  and  keen  ob- 
servation, and  are  able  to  recognise  their  friends 
in  a  crowd  even  after  long  absences.  They  are 
proverbially  imitative,  have  a  strong  desire  for 
knowledge,  and  are  exceedingly  sensitive  and 
sympathetic  in  their  natures.  Sympathy  and 
curiosity,  the  two  most  prominent  traits  in  simian 
psychology,  are,  significantly,  the  two  most  impor- 


154        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

tant  facts  in  the  psychology  of  man.  Sympathy  and 
curiosity  lie  at  the  foundation  of  human  civilisa- 
tion, sympathy  at  the  foundation  of  morals,  and 
curiosity  of  invention  and  science.  The  monkey 
whose  diary  appears  in  the  closing  pages  of 
Romanes'  '  Animal  Intelligence  '  was  possessed  of 
an  almost  ravenous  desire  to  know.  He  spent 
hour  after  hour  in  exploration,  examining  with 
the  indomitable  patience  of  a  scientist  everything 
that  came  within  the  bounds  of  his  little  horizon. 
And  when  he  had  found  out  any  new  thing,  he  was 
as  delighted  over  it  as  a  boy  who  has  solved  a 
hard  problem,  repeating  the  experiment  over  and 
over  until  it  was  thoroughly  familiar  to  him. 
Among  the  many  things  he  discovered  for  himself 
was  the  use  of  the  lever  and  the  screw.  Monkeys 
are  the  most  affectionate  of  all  animals  excepting 
dogs  and  men.  This  affection  reaches  its  culmina- 
tion, as  among  men,  in  the  love  of  the  mother  for 
her  child.  The  mother  monkey's  little  one  is  the 
object  of  her  constant  care  and  affection.  She 
nurses  and  bathes  it,  licks  it  and  cleans  its  coat, 
and  folds  it  in  her  arms  and  rocks  it  as  if  to  lull 
it  to  sleep,  just  as  human  mammas  do.  She 
divides  every  bite  with  her  little  one,  but  does  not 
hesitate  to  chastise  it  with  slaps  and  pinches  when 
it  is  rude.  The  monkey  child  is  generally  very 
obedient,  obedient  enough  for  an  example  to 
many  a  human  youngster. 

'  Very  touching,'  says  Brehm,  from  whom  many 
of  the  foregoing  facts  are  gleaned,  '  is  the  conduct 
of  the  mother  when  her  baby  is  obviously  suffer- 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       155 

ing.  And  if  it  dies  she  is  in  despair.  For  hours, 
and  even  for  days,  she  carries  the  little  corpse 
about  with  her,  refuses  all  food,  sits  indifferently 
in  the  same  spot,  and  often  literally  pines  to 
death '  (8). 

Orphan  monkeys,  according  to  Brehm,  are  often 
adopted  by  the  tribe,  and  carefully  looked  after  by 
the  other  monkeys,  both  male  and  female.  The 
great  mass  of  human  beings,  who  know  about  as 
much  about  the  real  emotional  life  of  monkeys 
as  wooden  Indians  do,  are  inclined  to  pass  over 
lightly  all  displays  of  feeling  by  these  people  of 
the  trees.  But  the  poet  knows,  and  the  prophet 
knows,  and  the  world  will  one  day  understand, 
that  in  the  gentle  bosoms  of  these  wild  woodland 
mothers  glow  the  antecedents  of  the  same  impulses 
as  those  that  cast  that  blessed  radiance  over  the 
lost  paradise  of  our  own  sweet  childhood.  The 
mother  monkey  who  gathered  green  leaves  as  she 
fled  from  limb  to  limb,  and  frantically  stuffed  them 
into  the  wound  of  her  dying  baby  in  order  to 
stanch  the  cruel  rush  of  blood  from  its  side,  all 
the  while  uttering  the  most  pitiful  cries  and 
casting  reproachful  glances  at  her  human  enemy, 
until  she  fell  with  her  darling  in  her  arms  and  a 
bullet  in  her  heart,  had  in  her  simian  soul  just  as 
genuine  mother-love,  and  love  just  as  sacred,  as 
that  which  burns  in  the  breast  of  woman. 

The  affection  of  monkeys  is  not  confined  to  the 
love  of  the  mother  for  her  child,  but  exists  among 
the  different  members  of  the  same  tribe,  and  extends 
even  to  human  beings,  especially  to  those  who 


156         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

make  any  pretensions  to  do  to  them  as  they  would 
themselves  be  done  by.  The  monkey  kept  by 
Romanes,  already  referred  to,  became  so  attached 
to  his  master  that  he  went  into  the  wildest 
demonstrations  of  joy  whenever  his  master,  after 
an  absence,  came  into  the  room.  Standing  on 
his  hind-legs  at  the  full  length  of  his  chain,  and 
reaching  out  both  hands  as  far  as  he  could  reach, 
he  screamed  with  all  his  might.  His  joy  was  so 
hysterical  that  it  was  impossible  to  carry  on  any 
kind  of  conversation  until  he  had  been  folded  in 
his  master's  arms,  when  he  immediately  grew 
quiet. 

'  After  I  took  this  monkey  back  to  the  Zoological 
Gardens,'  says  Romanes,  '  and  up  to  the  time  of 
his  death,  he  remembered  me  as  well  as  the  day 
he  was  returned.  I  visited  the  monkey-house 
about  once  a  month,  and  whenever  I  approached 
his  cage  he  saw  me  with  astounding  quickness — 
indeed,  generally  before  I  saw  him — and  ran  to 
the  bars,  through  which  he  thrust  both  hands  with 
every  expression  of  joy.  When  I  went  away  he 
always  followed  me  to  the  extreme  end  of  the 
cage,  and  stood  there  watching  me  as  long  as  I 
remained  in  sight.' 

The  following  account  of  the  attachment  of  a 
male  monkey  for  his  murdered  consort  is  a  pitiful 
tale  of  human  inhumanity  and  of  simian  tender- 
ness and  devotion  : 

'  A  member  of  a  shooting-party  killed  a  female 
monkey,  and  carried  her  body  to  his  tent  under  a 
banyan-tree.  The  tent  was  soon  surrounded  by 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       157 

forty  or  fifty  of  the  tribe,  who  made  a  great  noise 
and  threatened  to  attack  the  aggressor.  When 
he  presented  his  fowling-piece,  the  fearful  effects 
of  which  they  had  just  witnessed,  and  appeared 
perfectly  to  understand,  they  retreated.  The 
leader  of  the  troop,  however,  stood  his  ground, 
threatening  and  chattering  furiously.  At  last, 
finding  threats  of  no  avail,  the  broken-hearted 
creature  came  to  the  door  of  the  tent  and  began  a 
lamentable  moaning,  and  by  the  most  expressive 
signs  seemed  to  beg  for  the  dead  body  of  his 
beloved.  It  was  given  to  him.  He  took  it 
sorrowfully  in  his  arms  and  bore  it  away  to  his 
expecting  companions  (10). 

The  chattering  of  monkeys  is  not,  as  is  vulgarly 
supposed,  meaningless  vocalisation.  It  is  language. 
It  is  meaningless  to  human  ears  for  the  same 
reason  that  the  chattering  of  Frenchmen  is  mean- 
ingless to  Americans — because  human  beings  are 
foreigners.  The  conversation  of  monkeys  is  to 
convey  thought.  Every  species  that  thinks  and 
feels  has  means  for  conveying  its  thoughts  and 
feelings,  and  the  means  for  this  exchange,  whether 
it  be  sounds,  symbols,  gestures,  or  grimaces,  is 
language.  As  Wundt  somewhere  says :  '  If 
psychologists  of  to-day,  ignoring  all  that  an 
animal  can  express  through  gestures  and  sounds, 
limit  the  possession  of  language  to  human  beings, 
such  a  conclusion  is  scarcely  less  absurd  than  that 
of  many  philosophers  of  antiquity  who  regarded 
the  languages  of  barbarous  nations  as  animal 
cries.'  Mr.  Garner,  who  has  so  long  and  so 


158         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

sympathetically  associated  with  monkeys,  has 
been  able  to  translate  a  number  of  their  words 
and  to  enter  into  slight  communication  with  them. 
Among  the  words  he  has  been  able  to  understand 
are  the  words  for  'alarm,'  'good- will,'  'listen,' 
'  food,'  '  drink,'  '  monkey,'  and  '  fruit.'  According 
to  him,  the  simian  tongue  has  about  eight  or  nine 
sounds  which  may  be  changed  by  modulation  into 
three  or  four  times  that  number,  and  each 
different  species  or  kind  has  its  own  peculiar 
tongue  slightly  shaded  into  dialects.  There  may 
be  more  discriminating  students  than  Garner,  but 
few  certainly  who  have  approached  their  favourite 
problem  with  more  feeling  and  humanity.  Every 
one  should  read  his  beautiful  book  on  '  The  Speech 
of  Monkeys.'  '  Among  the  little  captives  of  the 
simian  race,'  says  he  tenderly,  in  closing  his 
chapter  on  the  emotional  character  of  these 
people,  *  I  have  many  little  friends  to  whom  I  am 
attached,  and  whose  devotion  to  me  is  as  warm 
and  sincere,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  as  that  of  any 
human  being.  I  must  confess  that  I  cannot 
discern  in  what  intrinsic  way  the  love  they  have 
for  me  differs  from  my  own  for  them ;  nor  can  I 
see  in  what  respect  their  love  is  less  divine  than  is 
my  own.' 

Dogs  are  distinguished  for  their  great  intelli- 
gence, the  pre-eminence  of  the  sense  of  smell, 
fidelity  to  duty,  nobleness  of  nature,  patience, 
courage,  and  affection.  In  all  of  these  particulars 
many  individual  dogs  are  superior  to  whole  races 
of  men.  Dogs  are  more  sensitive  to  physical 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       159 

suffering  than  savages,  and  will  cry  piteously  from 
slight  wounds  or  other  injuries.  Dogs  of  high  life 
have  genuine  feelings  of  dignity  and  self-respect, 
and  are  easily  wounded  in  their  sensibilities. 
Such  dogs  have  considerable  sense  of  propriety, 
and  suffer,  like  sensitive  children,  from  disappro- 
bation. Romanes  had  a  dog  that  was  so  sensitive 
that  he  resented  insult,  and  so  sympathetic  that 
he  always  fought  in  defence  of  other  dogs  when 
they  were  punished  or  attacked.  When  out 
driving  with  his  master,  this  dog  always  caught 
hold  of  his  master's  sleeve  every  time  the  horse 
was  touched  with  a  whip  (10).  Romanes  also 
tells  of  a  Scotch  terrier  who,  having  grown  old 
and  useless,  and  been  supplanted  by  a  younger 
dog,  Jack,  became  painfully  jealous,  and  imitated 
his  rival  in  everything  that  he  did,  even  to  ridicu- 
lous details,  in  order  to  retain  the  attentions  of 
the  household.  When  Jack  was  tenderly  caressed, 
the  old  dog  would  watch  for  a  time,  and  then 
burst  out  whining  as  if  in  the  deepest  distress  (10). 
Dogs  communicate  their  ideas  to  each  other  and 
to  human  beings,  generally  by  means  of  sounds 
and  gestures.  They  growl  in  anger,  yelp  in  eager- 
ness, howl  in  despair,  bark  in  joy  or  warning,  bay 
in  wonder,  wail  in  bitterness  and  pain,  whine  in 
supplication,  and  prostrate  themselves  in  sub- 
mission or  apology.  It  has  been  said  that  there 
never  was  a  man  who  possessed  the  stateliness  of 
a  St.  Bernard,  the  unerring  sagacity  of  the  collie, 
or  the  courage  and  tenacity  of  the  bulldog.  The 
vainest  dandy  is  not  more  delicate  in  his  ways 


160         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

than  the  Italian  greyhound,  nor  more  soft  and 
affectionate  than  the  Blenheim.  Many  a  deod  of 
heroism  has  been  done  by  dogs  which  would,  if 
done  by  men,  have  been  honoured  by  the  Order  of 
the  Victoria  Cross.  The  St.  Bernards  belonging 
to  the  monks  on  the  passes  between  Switzerland 
and  Italy  are  especially  celebrated  for  their 
devotion  to  the  business  of  saving  human  life. 
They  often  lose  their  own  lives  in  their  efforts 
to  rescue  travellers  baffled  and  overcome  by 
storm.  One  particularly  sagacious  individual, 
who  lost  his  life  in  this  way  some  years  ago,  wore 
a  medal  stating  that  he  had  been  the  means  of 
saving  twenty-two  human  lives.  In  devotion  the 
dog  is  superior  to  all  other  animals,  not  even 
excepting  man.  '  How  could  one  get  relief  from 
the  endless  dissimulation,  falsity,  and  malice  of 
mankind,'  exclaimed  Schopenhauer  in  one  of  his 
inspired  moments,  'if  there  were  no  dogs  into 
whose  honest  faces  he  could  look  without  distrust?' 
A  dog  will  follow  a  handful  of  rags  wrapped 
around  a  homeless  beggar,  day  after  day,  through 
heat  and  cold  and  storm  and  starvation,  just  as 
faithfully  as  he  will  follow  the  purple  of  a  king. 
The  dog  who  stood  over  the  lifeless  body  of  his 
master,  grieving  for  recognition  and  starting  at 
every  flutter  of  his  garments,  till  he  himself  died 
of  starvation,  had  in  his  faithful  breast  a  nobler 
heart  than  that  which  beats  in  the  bosom  of  most 
men.  And  the  devotion  of  Greyfriars  Bobby, 
who  every  night  for  twelve  years,  in  all  kinds  of 
weather,  slept  on  his  master's  grave,  was  well 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       161 

worthy  the  marble  tribute  which  to-day  stands  in 
Edinburgh  to  his  memory.  There  has  never  been 
recorded  in  the  history  of  the  world  an  instance 
of  more  extravagant  trust  and  devotion  than  that 
told  of  the  canine  companion  of  a  certain  vivi- 
sector,  which  licked  the  hand  of  his  master  while 
undergoing  the  crime  of  being  cut  to  pieces. 
Such  deeds  of  self-sacrifice  remind  one  of  the 
tales  told  of  imaginary  saints.  But  they  are  the 
deeds  of  only  dogs — of  beings  whom  half  the 
world  look  upon  with  indifference  and  contempt, 
and  whom  the  other  half  would  feel,  if  they  came 
within  reach,  under  the  strictest  obligations  to 
kick. 

'  When  some  proud  son  of  man  returns  to  earth, 
Unknown  to  glory  but  upheld  by  birth, 
The  sculptor's  art  exhausts  the  pomp  of  woe, 
And  storied  urns  record  who  rests  below ; 
When  all  is  done,  upon  the  tomb  is  seen, 
Not  what  he  was,  but  what  he  should  have  been  ; 
But  the  poor  dog,  in  life  the  firmest  friend, 
The  first  to  welcome,  foremost  to  defend, 
Whose  honest  heart  is  still  his  master's  own, 
Who  labours,  fights,  lives,  breathes,  for  him  alone, 
Unhonoured  falls,  unnoticed  all  his  worth — 
Denied  in  heaven  the  soul  he  had  on  earth.' 

I  am  not  one  of  those  who  regard  the  evidence 
for  the  post-mortem  existence  of  the  human  soul 
as  being  either  abundant  or  conclusive.  But  of 
one  thing  I  am  positive,  and  that  is,  that  there 
are  the  same  grounds  precisely  for  believing  in  the 
immortality  of  the  bird  and  the  quadruped  as  there 
are  for  the  belief  in  human  immortality.  And  it 

II 


162         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

is  delightful  to  find  great  thinkers  like  Haeckel, 
great  biologists  and  philosophers,  holding  the 
same  conviction.  Haeckel  is  the  giant  of  the 
Germans,  and  in  his  brilliant  book  'The  Riddle 
of  the  Universe  '  appears  this  rather  poetical  para- 
graph :  '  I  once  knew  an  old  head-forester,  who, 
being  left  a  widower  and  without  children  at  an 
early  age,  had  lived  alone  for  more  than  thirty 
years  in  a  noble  forest  of  East  Prussia.  His  only 
companions  were  one  or  two  servants,  with  whom 
he  exchanged  merely  a  few  necessary  words,  and  a 
great  pack  of  different  kinds  of  dogs,  with  whom 
he  lived  in  perfect  psychic  communion.  Through 
many  years  of  training  this  keen  observer  and 
friend  of  nature  had  penetrated  deep  into  the  indi- 
vidual souls  of  his  dogs,  and  he  was  as  convinced 
of  their  personal  immortality  as  he  was  of  his  own. 
Some  of  his  most  intelligent  dogs  were,  in  his 
impartial  estimation,  at  a  higher  stage  of  psychic 
development  than  his  old  stupid  maid  and  his 
rough  and  wrinkled  man-servant.  Any  unpre- 
judiced observer  who  will  study  the  psychic 
phenomena  of  a  fine  dog  for  a  year,  and  follow 
attentively  the  processes  of  its  thought,  judgment, 
and  reason,  will  have  to  admit  that  it  has  just  as 
valid  a  claim  to  immortality  as  man  himself.' 

Fido  was  a  shaggy  terrier  who  lived  years  ago 
in  the  old  home  on  the  farm  by  the  beautiful  brook. 
He  was  one  of  the  very  first  acquaintances  the 
writer  of  these  lines  made  on  coming  into  exist- 
ence. In  his  earlier  years,  before  age  had  dimmed 
his  mind  and  rheumatism  had  fastened  upon  him, 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       163 

he  was  an  exceedingly  agreeable  and  clever  canine, 
active  in  all  the  affairs  of  the  farm.  He  knew  the 
old  homestead  by  heart,  and  he  took  about  as 
much  interest  in  having  everything  go  right  as 
anybody — more,  perhaps,  even  than  we  boys  did. 
He  chased  the  pigs  out  of  the  orchard  without 
being  asked  to  do  so,  and  guarded  the  house  at 
night  with  the  vigilance  of  a  hired  watchman.  He 
seemed  to  realise  the  demands  of  everyday  situa- 
tions about  as  well  as  any  of  us.  He  could  dis- 
tinguish between  neighbours  who  were  accustomed 
to  come  on  the  premises  and  strangers  who  were 
not.  He  always  knew  when  company  came,  for 
he  invariably  attempted  to  profit  by  the  fact.  He 
had  been  taught  early  the  propriety  of  keeping  in 
the  background  when  his  tyrants  were  feeding, 
and  ordinarily  on  such  occasions  he  slept  dutifully 
by  the  kitchen  stove.  But  just  as  sure  as  a  guest 
sat  at  table,  Fido  would  turn  up,  and,  tapping  the 
visitor  gently  to  get  his  attention,  would  sit  up 
perfectly  straight,  with  his  paws  pendent  and  a 
peculiar  grin  on  his  face,  in  expectation  of  a 
morsel.  Dear  old  Fido !  How  much  he  thought 
of  all  of  us  !  And  how  meagerly,  as  I  know  now, 
were  his  matchless  love  and  services  requited ! 
On  Sundays  sometimes  the  human  members  of 
the  household  would  go  away  and  stay  all  day, 
and  Fido  and  the  cat  would  be  left  alone  to  get 
along  the  best  way  they  could.  He  knew  as  well 
as  any  of  us  when  these  days  came  around,  and 
he  dreaded  them.  I  suppose  he  had  learned  from 
experience  to  associate  cessation  of  farm  work  and 

II — 2 


164         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

peculiar  preparations  with  a  day  alone.  The  long, 
lonely  hours  probably  affected  him  somewhat  as 
they  do  a  human  being  who  is  compelled  to  stay 
alone  all  day  with  nothing  to  do.  But  what  a 
welcome  he  gave  us  in  the  evening  when  we  came 
back  !  This  was  indubitable  evidence  of  his  lone- 
liness. The  first  familiar  object  we  would  see  in 
the  evening,  on  coming  in  sight  of  home,  was 
faithful  Fido,  sitting  out  in  the  road  on  the  hill 
above  the  house — sitting  straight  up  in  that 
peculiar  way  of  his — watching  and  waiting  for 
our  home-coming.  He  knew,  or  seemed  to  know, 
the  direction  from  which  to  expect  us,  and  was 
able  to  recognise  us  a  long  way  off.  The  years 
have  been  many,  and  Fido's  dust  has  long  been 
scattered  by  the  gusts  over  the  farms  of  north-west 
Missouri ;  but  now,  in  fancy,  I  can  see  this  faithful 
creature  bounding  down  the  road  in  the  sunset  to 
meet  us,  as  he  used  to  do  in  the  golden  long-ago, 
leaping  and  smiling  and  wagging  his  tail,  and 
wriggling  and  barking  in  a  perfect  ecstasy  of 
gladness. 

Well,  I  know  Fido  could  feel  and  think,  that 
he  loved  and  feared  and  longed  and  dreaded  and 
dreamed  and  hated  and  grieved  and  sympathised 
and  reasoned  and  rejoiced — in  short,  that  he  was 
moved  by  about  the  same  passions  and  considera- 
tions as  human  beings  usually  are.  He  gave  the 
same  evidence  of  it  precisely  as  a  human  being 
does. 

The  dog  is  the  oldest  of  human  associates. 
Long  before  the  historical  period  the  dog  was 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       165 

domesticated  in  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa.  No 
race  of  men  is  too  primitive  to  be  without  the  dog. 
The  bones  of  the  dog  are  found  in  the  middens 
of  the  Baltic,  and  rude  representations  of  it  are 
chiseled  on  the  oldest  monuments  of  Egypt  and 
Assyria.  The  dog  was  the  servant  of  man  away 
in  paleolithic  times,  when  the  mastodon  was  on 
earth,  and  man  was  a  naked  troglodyte,  and 
Europe  extended  westward  to  the  Azores.  And 
he  has  been  a  faithful  friend,  a  tireless  ally,  and 
an  enthusiastic  slave  of  a  thankless  and  inhuman 
master  ever  since. 

Birds  are  pre-eminently  emotional  and  artistic. 
This  is  shown  by  their  fondness  for  singing,  their 
fine  dress,  their  pining  for  their  dead,  their  dainty 
architecture,  their  pretty  forms  and  manners  of 
life,  their  joyousness,  and  their  love  for  their 
young.  Birds  are  the  most  beautiful  and  engaging 
of  all  terrestrial  beings.  Endowed  with  the  power 
of  flight,  eminently  active,  light-hearted  and  free, 
attired  in  all  the  colours  of  the  rainbow,  and  with 
voices  of  unrivalled  richness  and  melody,  birds  are 
the  admiration  and  envy  of  all  of  those  that  dwell 
on  the  earth.  Birds  possess  naturally  and  in  mar- 
vellous perfection  that  power  of  locomotion  which 
has  been  so  long  sought  for  by  slow-shuffling  man. 
Birds  are  also  incomparable  musicians,  no  other 
animals,  not  even  men,  approaching  them  in  the 
surpassing  brilliancy  and  sweetness  of  their  song. 
No  human  musician  in  high-sounding  hall  can 
equal  the  artless  lay  of  the  wild  bird  ringing  melo- 
diously through  the  leafy  colonnades  of  the  woods. 


166         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

Like  men,  birds  sing  chiefly  of  love ;  but  they  also 
sing  for  pastime  or  pleasure.  Their  singing  is 
sweetest  during  the  season  of  courtship,  and  attains 
its  highest  development  in  the  males.  Birds  are 
ardent  lovers.  To  win  their  brides,  the  males 
contend  with  each  other,  and  display  their  charms 
of  plumage  and  song  with  the  wildness  of  human 
Romeos. 

The  song  of  birds  is  generally  acquired  by  in- 
heritance from  the  species,  but  is  sometimes  bor- 
rowed by  imitation  from  other  birds,  or  even  from 
other  animals.  Birds  taken  from  their  species 
when  young,  before  they  have  heard  their  native 
song,  sing  generally  the  song  of  their  kind,  but  it 
is  likely  to  be  interspersed  with  notes  and  phrases 
from  the  birds  around  them.  Birds  thus  isolated 
have  been  known  to  adopt  entirely  the  song  of 
their  surroundings.  Olive  Thorne  Miller  vouches 
for  the  fact  that  an  English  sparrow  she  once 
knew  grew  up  in  company  with  a  canary,  and 
came  in  time  to  sing  the  song  of  its  more  talented 
companion  to  perfection.  It  must  have  been  a 
Shakspere  of  a  bird,  however,  to  have  soared  so 
high  above  the  excruciating  accomplishments  of 
the  generality  of  its  species. 

The  songs  of  birds  can  be  set  to  music  just  as 
the  melodies  of  men  can.  The  songs  of  several 
birds  were  published  in  the  American  Naturalist  a 
few  years  ago.  And  Winchell,  the  well-known 
English  student  of  birds,  has  written  a  clever 
book  on  the  '  Cries  and  Call-notes  of  Wild  Birds,' 
in  which  he  prints  the  calls  and  songs  of  most  of 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       167 

the  native  birds  of  England.  According  to  this 
writer,  who  has  perhaps  studied  the  music  of  birds 
more  critically  than  anyone  else,  the  song  of  the 
nightingale,  when  printed  in  the  notation  of 
ordinary  human  music,  is  like  a  piano  solo.  It 
is  made  up  of  a  score  or  so  of  different  strains, 
with  trills  and  crescendos,  and  all  executed  in  so 
inimitable  a  manner  that  it  is  unrecognisable  when 
repeated  on  a  musical  instrument  or  the  human 
voice.  One  of  these  strains,  curiously  enough,  is 
identical  with  the  song  of  a  certain  bush-warbler 
of  western  Canada — as  if  the  English  vocalist  had 
plagiarised  the  song  of  its  humbler  cousin  in  com- 
piling its  incomparable  repertoire.  The  song  of 
the  mocking-bird  is  a  magnificent  medley,  made 
up  of  the  calls,  trills,  twitters,  warbles,  warnings, 
and  love-songs,  of  a  score  or  more  of  other  birds. 
I  have  heard  this  bird  along  the  Solomon  and 
Arkansas  valleys  repeat  in  the  most  perfect  manner 
the  notes  and  songs  of  the  pewee,  purple  martin, 
kingbird,  flicker,  blue  jay,  catbird,  canary,  crow, 
English  sparrow,  red-headed  woodpecker,  quail, 
cardinal,  cuckoo,  robin,  red-wings,  grackle,  meadow- 
lark,  night-hawk,  whip-poor-will,  besides  many 
other  calls  and  notes,  perhaps  of  birds  I  did  not 
know.  In  the  case  of  some  of  these  birds  the 
mocker  made  all  of  the  different  sounds  of  each 
bird.  The  song  of  the  mocking-bird  is  delivered 
at  any  time,  day  or  night,  and  generally  in  a  state 
of  high  ecstasy  and  excitement,  the  performer 
flying  from  tree  to  tree  and  from  house-top  to 
barn-top,  occasionally  throwing  himself  into  the 


i68         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

air  in  the  most  absurd  manner,  and  all  the  time 
pouring  forth  such  a  stream  of  melody  that  one 
would  think  all  the  birds  in  the  neighbourhood 
had  suddenly  come  together  and  let  loose  in  a 
grand  festival  of  song. 

According  to  Chapman,  many  of  the  notes  of 
birds  are  language  notes  rather  than  sounds  ex- 
pressive of  sentiment.  Of  the  robin  this  well- 
known  student  of  birds  says:  'The  song  and 
call-notes  of  this  bird,  while  familiar  to  everyone, 
are  in  reality  understood  by  no  one,  and  offer 
excellent  subjects  for  the  student  of  bird  language. 
Its  notes  express  interrogation,  suspicion,  alarm, 
and  caution,  and  it  signals  to  its  companions  to 
take  wing.  Indeed,  few  of  our  birds  have  a  more 
extended  vocabulary.'  Winchell  says  that  the 
common  English  sparrow  has  as  many  as  seven 
different  notes,  which  it  uses  to  express  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  passing  through  its  rather 
active  but  not  very  highly  honoured  head:  (i)  The 
common  note  of  address  of  the  male  to  the  female; 
(2)  a  note  of  alarm  used  by  both  male  and  female 
adults,  but  never  by  the  young ;  (3)  an  emphatic 
alarm  note,  always  uttered  by  sentinels  when  a 
hawk  is  near  or  when  a  man  approaches  with  a 
gun  ;  (4)  the  note  of  the  female  when  surrounded 
by  several  noisy  and  contending  male  rivals ; 
(5)  an  autumn  cry  uttered  by  the  first  one  of  the 
company  perceiving  danger  and  flying  up  from 
the  hedges  and  'iclds — never  uttered  by  young, 
but  by  adults  of  both  sexes ;  (6)  the  love  note  of 
both  male  and  female,  used  mostly  by  the  female, 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       169 

and  generally  with  a  fluttering  or  shaking  accom- 
paniment of  her  wings ;  (7)  a  curious  note  some- 
times heard  in  London — meaning  not  well  under- 
stood, but  supposed  to  be  a  sort  of  chuckle  or 
sign  of  contentment.  Each  one  of  these  several 
different  notes  may  be  used  to  stand  for  various 
ideas  depending  on  the  circumstances  by  being 
given  different  emphasis  and  inflection,  just  as  in 
the  languages  of  many  primitive  races  of  men  a 
small  vocabulary  of  words  is  used  to  stand  for  a 
much  larger  number  of  ideas  by  being  pronounced 
differently.  In  the  Chinese  language,  for  instance, 
the  words  are  increased  to  three  or  four  times  the 
original  number  by  modulation;  but  the  same 
thing  is  observed  in  all  languages,  both  human 
and  non-human.  Verbal  poverty  is  pieced  out 
by  verbal  variation.  We  say  ac'-cent  or  ac-cent', 
depending  on  whether  we  wish  to  express  the  idea 
of  a  noun  or  a  verb. 

The  memory  of  birds  is  well  developed.  Many 
of  them  remember  the  very  grove  or  meadow,  and 
even  the  very  knot-hole  or  bush,  in  which  they 
built  their  nest  the  season  before,  although  in  the 
meantime  they  have  journeyed  over  lands  and 
seas  and  sojourned  thousands  of  miles  away. 
Every  year,  for  several  seasons  past,  in  late  summer 
and  early  fall,  after  the  nesting-time  is  over  and 
the  young  ones  are  all  grown,  the  purple  martins 
have  gathered  in  large  numbers  about  the  Field 
Columbian  Museum,  in  Jackson  Park,  Chicago. 
They  stay  here  for  a  few  weeks,  foraging  the  sur- 
rounding air  for  insects  by  day,  and  sleeping  on 


170        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

the  great  dome  of  the  Museum  by  night,  finally 
flying  away  to  be  seen  no  more  in  such  numbers 
till  next  year.  These  birds,  many  of  them  any- 
way, must  remember  from  one  year  to  another 
this  annual  assembly  here  by  the  big  waters,  else 
why  would  they  come  together  at  this  particular 
spot  from  all  over  the  country  ?  I  have  no  doubt 
that  some  of  them,  having  sojourned  here  year 
after  year  for  some  time,  remember  well  the  great 
ugly  building  where  they  meet,  and  are  more  or 
less  familiar  with  the  surrounding  locality  from 
having  searched  it  so  often.  I  wonder  what  led 
to  the  establishing  of  the  custom  in  the  first  place. 
Customs  do  not  fall  from  the  skies.  And  what 
advantage  is  there  in  the  practice?  What  are 
they  up  to  as  they  chirp  and  wheel  in  the  air,  and 
flutter  up  the  slopes  and  sail  down  again,  and 
perch  on  the  pinnacles  and  twitter  ?  Maybe  it  is 
a  sort  of  Saratoga  for  them,  where  they  all  come 
together  ostensibly  to  dip  their  bills  in  the  blue 
waves,  but  where  sons  swell  in  their  new  feathers, 
and  sly  mammas  find  prospects  for  unmarketable 
misses. 

A  parrot  has  been  known  to  remember  the  voice 
of  its  mistress  after  an  absence  of  a  year  and  a 
half — a  very  remarkable  feat  even  for  the  grey 
matter  of  a  bird.  A  flock  of  geese  mentioned  by 
Romanes  showed  their  knowledge  of  the  arrival 
of  market-day,  which  came  every  two  weeks,  by 
assembling  regularly  on  such  days,  early  in  the 
morning,  in  front  of  the  town  inn  where  the 
market  was  held,  to  pick  up  the  corn.  They  never 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       171 

came  on  the  wrong  day ;  and  on  one  occasion, 
when  the  market  was  omitted  on  account  of  a 
holiday,  here  came  the  unfailing  fowls  cackling 
and  shouting  as  usual  in  merrj  anticipation  of 
their  fortnightly  feast,  but  ignorant  of  the  national 
necessities  which  had  doomed  them  to  be  disap- 
pointed (ro). 

Parrots  remember  and  call  for  their  absent 
friends,  and  mumble  phrases  in  their  dreams 
which  have  been  taught  to  them.  These  gifted 
birds  learn  long  poems  by  heart,  and  sing  songs 
with  considerable  art.  A  parrot  belonging  to  the 
canon  of  the  Cathedral  of  Salzburg  was  given 
instruction  regularly  two  hours  every  day  for  ten 
years,  from  1830  to  1840.  The  bird  became  very 
proficient  in  speech  and  exceedingly  intelligent. 
It  took  part  in  conversations,  whistled  tunes, 
and  was  able  to  sing  a  number  of  popular  songs, 
among  them  an  entire  aria  from  Flotow's  opera 
of 'Martha'  (n). 

Educated  birds  though,  like  educated  dogs, 
horses,  cats,  mice,  men,  and  everything  else,  are 
very  different  beings  from  the  uneducated.  Culti- 
vation is  a  key  that  unlocks  all  sorts  of  miracles. 
Cats  are  cultivated  tigers ;  and  the  richest  grains 
that  ripen  in  the  fields  of  men,  and  the  loveliest 
flowers  that  blow,  are  only  educated  weeds.  Even 
the  flea  may  be  taught  to  exchange  leaping  for 
walking,  to  draw  a  tiny  wagon,  to  ride  on  the 
seat,  to  fire  a  toy  cannon,  and  do  many  other 
feats. 

There  is  one  family   of   birds    in   which   the 


172         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

superior  size,  gorgeousness,  and  vivacity,  usual  to 
the  males,  are  found  in  the  other  sex,  the  females 
being  the  larger  and  more  brightly  coloured — the 
Phalarope  family.  Indeed,  the  members  of  this 
small  family  not  only  reverse  the  usual  arrange- 
ment of  the  sexual  characters  of  birds,  but  com- 
pletely upset  many  of  the  most  cherished  tradi- 
tions of  the  avian  household.  The  female  does  the 
wooing,  and  takes  the  lead  in  selecting  the  nest 
site.  And  while  she  lays  the  eggs,  the  privilege  of 
incubation  she  hands  over  magnanimously  to  her 
dull-coloured  mate. 

Birds  have  a  keen  observation  and  a  good  deal 
of  that  invaluable  faculty  known  as  common  - 
sense.  It  is  wonderful  how  quickly  they  learn  to 
avoid  telegraph-wires  when  these  invisible  but 
deadly  gossamers  are  first  stretched  across  a 
country,  and  how  unerringly  they  keep  at  safe 
distances  when  hunted  with  firearms.  An  ex- 
perienced crow  can  tell  a  cane  from  a  gun-barrel 
almost  as  far  as  he  can  see  it. 

Nearly  all  birds  build  nests  of  some  kind  in 
which  to  cradle  their  eggs  and  young.  The 
cow- bird  and  cuckoo  (European),  however,  are 
exceptions.  These  birds  have  the  rather  human 
practice  of  turning  their  cares  and  labours  over  to 
somebody  else.  They  are  loafers  and  parasites. 
They  lay  their  eggs  secretly  in  the  nests  of  other 
birds,  where  their  eggs  are  hatched  and  their 
young  cared  for  by  an  alien  mother.  I  have  seen 
a  mother  song-sparrow  hustling  about  among  the 
shrubs  and  grasses  for  an  hour  at  a  time  almost, 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       173 

gathering  food  for  a  young  cow-bird  nearly  twice 
as  big  as  she  was,  while  her  foundling  sat 
phlegmatically  at  the  foot  of  a  tree  chirping  and 
fluttering  its  wings,  and  acting  as  a  thankless  and 
apparently  bottomless  receptacle  for  the  morsel 
after  morsel  laboriously  harvested  for  it  by  its 
tireless  little  foster-mother.  Sand-martins  and 
kingfishers  burrow  in  the  earth  and  rear  their 
broods  in  subterranean  cradles ;  gulls  and  game- 
birds  build  on  the  ground;  the  flamingoes  and 
barn-swallows  build  mud  nests  ;  the  woodpeckers 
mine  holes  in  trees ;  doves  and  eagles  make  plat- 
forms of  sticks ;  the  tailor-bird  bastes  living  leaves 
together ;  the  social  weavers  construct  great  straw 
roofs  covering  the  top  of  a  tree,  and  build  their 
nests  on  the  limbs  beneath;  most  singing  birds 
build  daintily-lined  baskets,  and  swing  them  in 
trees  and  bushes. 

It  is  often  said  that  all  the  birds  of  a  species 
build  their  nests  in  precisely  the  same  way,  and 
that,  while  men  change  and  improve  their  dwelling- 
places  from  generation  to  generation,  birds  build 
their  abodes  in  the  same  old  way,  just  as  their 
ancestors  built  theirs  centuries  and  centuries  ago. 
This  is  a  favourite  thought  with  the  fogies,  with 
those  who  change  not  in  their  thinking  from  the 
ways  hacked  out  for  them  centuries  and  centuries 
ago.  Birds  are  like  men.  Some  of  them — some 
races  and  some  individuals — are  much  more  given 
to  initiative  than  others.  There  is  as  wide  a 
difference  between  the  hang-bird  and  the  auk  in 
the  construction  of  their  domiciles  as  between  the 


174         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

millionaire  and  the  savage.  And  the  hang-bird  has 
come  by  her  home-making  art  through  centuries 
of  improvement,  just  as  the  millionaire  has  arrived 
at  his.  It  is  believed  by  ornithologists  that  the 
first  nests  of  birds  were  the  niches  of  rocks  or 
simple  hollows  scooped  in  the  sand  and  soil,  such 
as  are  still  seen  among  the  more  primitive  bird 
races,  and  that  from  these  aboriginal  beginnings 
have  come,  through  ages  of  evolution,  the  elaborate 
creations  of  the  cotton-bird,  weaver-bird,  tailor- 
bird,  oven-bird,  the  baya-sparrow,  the  finches,  and 
the  orioles.  The  savage  who  lives  unmolested 
generation  after  generation  in  the  same  land  and 
country  builds  his  simple  hut  in  just  the  same 
way  as  his  ancestors  built  theirs,  and  thinks  the 
same  things  his  ancestors  thought  a  thousand 
years  before  him.  Sir  Samuel  Baker,  in  a  paper 
on  '  The  Races  of  the  Nile  Basin,'  points  out  that 
each  tribe  of  men  in  eastern  Africa,  like  each 
species  of  bird,  has  its  own  peculiar  style  of  hut, 
and  that  the  huts  of  the  various  tribes  are  as 
constant  in  their  types  as  are  the  nests  of 
birds.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  their  head- 
dresses as  of  their  huts ;  and  this  fixed  character 
exists  also  in  their  languages,  customs,  and  re- 
ligions. It  is  only  some  races  of  men  that  are 
given  to  growth  and  fluidity,  and  only  some  men 
of  these  special  races. 

Right  in  our  own  country,  among  the  remote 
mountain  recesses  of  Appalachia,  surrounded  on 
all  sides  by  the  most  wonderful  development, 
material  and  intellectual,  the  world  has  ever  seen, 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       175 

lives  a  race  of  rude  mountain  folk  almost  as 
aboriginal  in  their  ways  and  views  of  life,  and  as 
unaffected  by  civilisation,  as  if  they  were  in  the 
heart  of  Africa.  They  live  huddled  together  in 
one-room  log-cabins  without  windows  or  floors, 
eat  bacon  and  cornmeal,  carry  on  almost  constant 
wars,  and  execute  the  deputies  of  civilisation  who 
happen  to  stray  into  their  illicit  dominions,  just 
as  they  have  done  from  the  time  these  mountain 
silences  were  first  broken  by  them  150  or  200 
years  ago. 

Birds,  as  a  rule,  use  a  great  deal  of  care  and 
thought  in  the  location  of  their  nests.  After  they 
have  selected  a  certain  grove  or  field  as  the  one 
best  suited  to  their  purposes,  or  as  the  one  around 
which  cluster  the  happiest  memories,  it  usually 
requires  several  days  of  flying  and  peeping  about, 
of  spying  and  exploration,  before  the  exact  spot 
for  the  precious  domicile  is  finally  settled  upon. 
It  is  a  delicate  matter  for  many  birds,  for  security 
from  sun,  storm,  and  enemies  must  all  be  taken 
into  account.  Old  birds,  as  has  been  frequently 
observed,  build  better  nests  and  select  more  clever 
locations  for  their  nests  than  the  young  and 
inexperienced.  The  nest-building  habits  of  many 
birds  are  known  to  have  changed  during  the  past 
few  hundred  years.  The  American  house-swallow 
did  most  certainly  not  build  under  the  eaves  of 
human  houses  300  years  ago,  nor  did  the  hair-bird 
ine  her  nest  with  horsehair  as  she  invariably 
does  now.  The  fact  that  wrens,  swifts,  and 
martins  now  build  almost  altogether  in  boxes  and 


176        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

chimneys  shows  that  birds  are  able  and  willing  to 
adapt  themselves  to  new  conditions.  The  chimney- 
swift  and  purple  martin,  it  is  said,  still  cling  to 
their  aboriginal  custom  of  rearing  their  young  in 
hollow  trees  in  the  unsettled  parts  of  America.  The 
indomitable  house-sparrow  builds  its  nest  almost 
anywhere,  from  knot-holes  and  tin  cans  to  electric- 
light  globes  and  tree-tops.  Its  original  dwelling 
was  probably  an  arboreal  affair,  like  that  of  other 
sparrows,  and  different  nesting-places  have  been 
adopted  as  a  result  of  its  association  with  man. 
Not  only  in  its  architecture,  but  in  several  other 
ways,  this  bird  has  departed  from  the  traditions  of 
its  tribe.  The  Fringillidae  (the  sparrow  family 
of  birds)  are  seed-eaters,  both  in  structure  and 
practice.  But  the  house-sparrow,  since  it  left  the 
fields  and  groves  to  become  a  gamin  on  human 
streets,  has  learned  to  eat  almost  anything,  and 
one  thing,  too,  about  as  cheerfully  as  another. 
The  varied  habits  of  this  bird  are  probably  due  to 
its  natural  elasticity  in  the  first  place,  supple- 
mented by  the  unsettling  influences  of  its  rather 
kaleidoscopic  experiences  during  the  past  few 
hundred  years. 

The  fear  of  birds  for  man  is  an  acquired  trait 
due  to  ages  of  persecution.  If  man  would  treat 
birds  kindly,  they  would  act  toward  him  as  they 
do  toward  any  other  friendly  animal.  When 
unfrequented  islands  are  first  visited  by  man,  the 
birds  are  found  to  be  perfectly  fearless  of  him, 
flying  about  him,  feeding  from  his  hand,  and 
manifesting  no  more  timidity  than  if  he  were  a 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       177 

big-hearted  bird  himself.  Darwin  states  that, 
when  he  stopped  at  the  Galapagos  Islands  on  his 
famous  trip  around  the  world  in  the  Beagle,  he 
found  the  birds  there  so  tame  that  he  could  push 
them  from  the  branches  of  the  trees  with  his  gun- 
barrel.  Professor  Nutting,  of  the  State  University 
of  Iowa,  in  an  article  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly 
for  August,  1903,  tells  of  the  almost  absolute 
fearlessness  of  the  birds  on  the  island  of  Laysan, 
an  isolated  atoll  in  the  Pacific  west  of  the  Hawaian 
Islands,  which  he  visited  during  that  summer. 
The  island  swarms  with  bird  life — petrels,  alba- 
trosses, and  tropical  birds  of  various  kinds — and 
these  birds  betray  no  more  fear  in  the  presence  of 
man  than  if  he  were  a  cow.  The  albatrosses  were 
so  numerous  and  so  indifferent  to  the  presence  of 
man  that  it  was  necessary  to  shove  them  aside 
with  one's  foot  to  keep  from  stepping  on  them 
when  one  went  for  a  walk  along  the  sand-stretches 
of  the  shore.  Professor  Nutting,  took  photographs 
of  birds  which  literally  posed  for  him  in  all  sorts 
of  positions,  and  half-savage  jackies  amused  them- 
selves by  going  about  and  pulling  the  pretty  tail 
feathers  from  the  tropical  birds  as  they  sat  on 
their  nests.  I  have  known  of  two  cases  where 
persons,  by  going  to  the  same  place  day  after  day 
with  food  and  kindness,  have  in  the  course  of  a 
few  weeks  taught  robins,  sparrows,  and  other 
birds,  to  lose  all  fear  of  them,  so  much  so  as  to  sit 
on  their  shoulders  and  arms  and  eat  out  of  their 
hands.  This  is  the  spirit  all  birds  would  show  all 
the  time  toward  their  featherless  lords  if  these 

12 


178        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

feather-less  ones  would  only  treat  them  with  half 
the  consideration  they  merit. 

The  love  of  a  bird  for  the  treasures  of  her  nest 
is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  things  of  this  world. 
Mother-like,  the  parent  bird  will  do  anything 
almost  for  the  sake  of  her  little  ones.  Who  has 
not  seen  the  kildeer  strive  with  all  the  tact  of  her 
clever  little  soul  to  allure  some  big  giant  of  a 
human  being,  who  has  wandered  into  her  neigh- 
bourhood, away  from  her  nest  of  precious  young  ? 
Many  a  time  as  a  boy  on  the  farm  I  have  followed 
one  of  these  birds  limping  and  tumbling  and 
fluttering  along  on  the  ground  a  few  feet  ahead  of 
me,  utterly  disabled,  as  I  supposed,  but  always 
managing  to  keep  just  a  little  beyond  the  reach  of 
my  eager  hands.  And  when  the  artful  mother 
has  led  me  far  from  the  sacred  spot  where  lay  all 
there  was  in  this  world  to  her,  how  triumphantly 
she  has  lifted  herself  on  her  unharmed  wings  and, 
to  my  utter  astonishment,  sailed  away.  The 
partridge  and  the  mourning-dove  are,  if  possible, 
even  more  artful  in  their  acting  than  the  kildeer. 
After  I  became  a  large  boy  and  had  been  told  the 
meaning  of  these  exhibitions  by  parent  birds,  I 
often  followed  the  mourning-dove,  thinking  the 
bird  must  be  really  wounded  after  all,  so  perfectly 
did  it  pretend.  But  the  cunning  of  the  kildeer  is 
not  confined  to  luring  one  away  from  the  nest. 
If  by  some  accident  one  finds  her  nest  (and  the 
nest  is  so  cleverly  concealed  that,  if  it  is  discovered 
at  all,  it  will  be  by  pure  accident),  the  resourceful 
mother  is  ready  with  other  expedients  to  outwit 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       179 

you.  She  watches  you  all  the  time  from  the 
proper  distance,  and  knows  by  your  conduct  the 
moment  you  have  found  her  nest.  And  before 
you  have  even  had  time  to  admire  the  skill 
displayed  by  the  mother  in  blending  so  perfectly 
her  abode  with  its  surroundings,  a  single  peculiar 
note  from  her  has  caused  the  whole  nestful  of 
cuddling  young  ones  to  dart  out  of  their  cradle 
and  disappear  among  the  surrounding  clods  as  if 
by  magic.  No  amount  of  searching  can  find  one 
of  them.  They  have  vanished  as  effectually  as  if 
they  had  evaporated.  And  it  is  enough  to  touch 
the  heart  of  the  most  indifferent  to  see  the  anxious 
mother  bird,  as  I  have  seen  her  from  the  cranny 
of  a  neighbouring  rock-pile,  come  back  to  her 
nest  and  call  her  scattered  children  together  again 
after  they  have  once  dispersed  at  her  command. 
Circling  around  the  nest  two  or  three  times  to 
assure  herself  that  no  one  is  nigh,  she  alights  and 
begins  a  low  clucking  sound  like  that  of  a  hen 
calling  her  brood.  The  little  ones  come  out  of  their 
hiding-places  one  after  another  as  mysteriously 
as  they  vanished.  You  can't  see  for  the  life  of 
you  where  they  come  from.  They  seem  to  just 
emanate.  And  if  one  of  them  fails  to  come  at  her 
call — for  the  devoted  mother  knows  very  well  just 
how  many  she  has — she  extends  her  search  farther 
out  from  her  nest,  looking  all  around  and  keeping 
up  that  peculiar  little  cluck,  until  the  half-scared  - 
to-death  little  slyboots  finally  comes  creeping  out 
from  his  improvised  snuggery  somewhere.  If  a 
kildeer's  nest  has  once  been  found,  and  the  mother 

12—3 


i8o         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

feels  that  it  is  in  danger  of  future  visits,  she  will 
move  her  family  at  night  to  some  other  locality, 
and  it  is  practically  impossible  ever  to  find  it 
again.  The  family  relations  of  the  ring-dotterels 
are  said  to  be  'so  charming  and  touching  that 
even  hunters  recoil  from  shooting  a  female  sur- 
rounded by  her  young  ones.' 

Human  beings,  true  to  their  instinct  never  to 
call  into  action  their  ability  to  think  if  they  can 
employ  their  faculty  for  nonsense  instead,  call  this 
love  of  the  mother  bird  '  machinery.'  But  there 
are  some  of  us  (and  our  numbers  are  increasing) 
who  are  disposed  to  put  off  the  adoption  of  this 
conclusion  until  we  go  mad.  The  bird  builds  her 
nest,  weaving  it  of  the  rarest  fibres.  She  hides  it 
in  the  copse  or  prudently  hangs  it  far  out  on  some 
inaccessible  bough.  She  lays  her  beautiful  eggs, 
and  hatches  them  with  the  warmth  and  life  of  her 
own  breast.  She  tends  her  young,  bringing  them 
food  and  drink,  and  watching  over  them  with  a 
tender  and  tireless  vigilance.  She  protects  them 
in  storm  with  her  own  little  body,  worries  about 
them  when  danger  lurks,  and  dreams  of  them,  no 
doubt,  as  she  rocks  and  sleeps  under  the  silent 
stars.  She  sings  to  them  in  the  overflow  of  her 
gladness  and  hope,  and  risks  her  very  existence  to 
shield  them  from  harm.  She  teaches  them  to  fly, 
to  find  their  food,  and  to  detect  their  enemies. 
She  is  true  to  her  mate,  and  her  mate  is  true  and 
kind  to  her.  As  the  days  of  summer  shorten,  and 
the  cool,  long  nights  warn  of  approaching  autumn, 
she  leads  her  children  away  from  the  old  place, 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       181 

she  and  her  faithful  mate,  out  into  the  wide  old 
world.  And  I  say  there  is  love  in  the  heart  ol 
that  mother  as  truly  as  in  the  heart  of  woman, 
and  there  are  joy  and  genuineness  and  sorrow  and 
fidelity  in  that  sylvan  home  more  sacred  than 
may  sometimes  bloom  in  the  cold  mansions  of 
men. 

Conjugal  love  is  also  very  strong  in  many  of 
the  feathered  races,  especially  among  those  in 
which  the  wedding  is  for  successive  seasons  or 
for  life.  The  pining  of  love-birds  for  their  dead 
sweethearts  is  well  known.  The  mandarin  duck 
is  proverbial  for  its  marital  faithfulness,  and  a 
pair  of  these  fowls  is  carried  by  the  Chinese  in 
their  marriage  processions  as  an  emblem  of  con- 
stancy. Many  instances  are  recorded  of  birds, 
after  having  been  deprived  of  their  mates,  refusing 
steadfastly  the  attentions  of  other  birds,  and  even 
sometimes  separating  themselves  entirely  from  the 
society  of  their  kind.  The  following  account  of 
the  devotion  of  a  widowed  pigeon  for  her  deceased 
consort  sounds  like  a  tale  of  human  woe  : 

1 A  man  set  to  watch  a  field  much  patronised 
by  pigeons  shot  an  old  male  pigeon  who  had  long 
been   an    inhabitant    of   the   farm.      His    mate, 
around   whom   he   had   for   many  a  year  cooed, 
whom  he  had  nourished  with  his  own  crop  and 
had   assisted  in   rearing   numerous  young   ones 
immediately  settled   on  the  ground  by  his  side 
She  refused  to  leave  him,  and  manifested  her  grief 
in  the  most  expressive  manner.    The  labourer  took 
up  the  dead  bird  and  hung  it  on  a  stake.     The 


i8a         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

widow  still  refused  to  forsake  her  husband,  and 
continued  day  after  day  slowly  walking  around  the 
stake  on  which  his  body  hung.  The  kind-hearted 
wife  of  the  farmer  heard  of  the  matter,  and  went 
to  the  relief  of  the  stricken  bird.  On  arriving  at 
the  spot,  she  found  the  poor  bird  still  watching  at 
the  side  of  her  dead,  and  making  an  occasional 
effort  to  get  to  him.  She  was  much  spent  with 
her  long  fasting  and  grief.  She  had  made  a 
circular  beaten  path  around  the  corpse  of  her 
companion  '  (12). 

And  these  are  the  beings  whose  bones  men  jest 
over  at  their  feasts,  and  brutes  shoot  for  pastime 
on  human  holidays.  Much  has  been  said  of  the 
sorrow  of  birds  for  their  deceased  mates,  but  not 
too  much.  For  the  avian  soul  may  be  smothered 
by  the  gloom  and  loneliness  that  come  upon  the 
heart,  when  the  great  light  of  love  and  com- 
panionship has  gone  out,  quite  as  completely  as 
the  soul  of  a  bereaved  human.  In  not  many 
human  homes  where  loved  ones  lie  sick  and  dying 
are  felt  the  pangs  of  more  genuine  grief  than  those 
sometimes  suffered  by  birds  when  their  friends 
and  companions  are  stricken  in  death.  The  follow- 
ing incident,  vouched  for  by  Dr.  Franklin,  who 
observed  it,  is  only  one  among  many  such  instances 
recorded  in  the  literature  on  birds  : 

A  pair  of  parrots  had  lived  together  on  the  most 
loving  terms  for  four  years,  when  the  female  was 
taken  with  a  serious  attack  of  gout.  She  grew 
rapidly  worse,  and  was  soon  so  weak  as  to  be 
unable  to  leave  her  perch  for  food,  when  the  male, 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       183 

faithful  and  tender  as  a  human  spouse,  took  it 
upon  himself  to  carry  food  to  her  regularly  in  his 
beak.  '  He  continued  feeding  her  in  this  way  for 
four  months,  but  the  infirmities  of  his  companion 
increased  day  by  day,  until  at  last  she  was  no 
longer  able  to  support  herself  on  the  perch.  She 
remained  cowering  down  in  the  bottom  of  the 
cage,  making  from  time  to  time  ineffectual  efforts 
to  regain  her  perch.  The  male  was  always  near 
her,  and  did  everything  in  his  power  to  aid  the 
feeble  efforts  of  his  dear  better-half.  Seizing  the 
poor  invalid  by  the  beak  or  the  upper  part  of  her 
wing,  he  tried  his  best  to  enable  her  to  rise,  and 
repeated  his  efforts  several  times.  His  constancy, 
his  gestures,  and  his  continued  solicitude,  all 
showed  in  this  affectionate  bird  the  most  ardent 
desire  to  relieve  the  sufferings  and  assist  the  weak- 
ness of  his  sinking  companion.  But  the  scene 
became  still  more  affecting  when  the  female  was 
dying.  Her  unhappy  consort  moved  about  her 
incessantly,  his  attentions  and  tender  cares  re- 
doubled. He  even  tried  to  open  her  beak  to  give 
some  nourishment.  He  ran  to  her,  and  then 
returned  with  a  troubled  and  agitated  look.  At 
intervals  he  uttered  the  most  plaintive  cries ;  then, 
with  his  eyes  fixed  on  her,  kept  a  mournful  silence. 
At  length  his  companion  breathed  her  last.  From 
that  moment  he  pined  away,  and  in  the  course  of 
a  few  weeks  died  '  (10). 

Even  the  rough-looking  ostrich  has  sensibility 
enough  to  die  of  a  broken  heart,  as  was  the  case  in 
the  Jardin  des  Plantes  at  Paris  a  few  years  ago. 


184         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

There  is  many  a  heart  with  a  slabless  grave  far 
from  the  haunts  of  men,  and  many  a  tear  in  secret 
brews  that  never  wets  the  eye. 

The  individual  who  has  never  acquired  the 
enthusiasm  for  a  knowledge  of  the  birds  and  a 
love  for  their  presence  and  association  has  omitted 
some  of  the  richest  emotions  of  life.  '  The  sight 
of  a  bird  or  the  sound  of  its  voice  is  at  all  times 
an  event  of  such  significance  to  me,'  says  Chap- 
man, 'a  source  of  such  unfailing  pleasure,  that 
when  I  go  afield  with  those  to  whom  birds  are 
strangers  I  am  deeply  impressed  by  the  compara- 
tive barrenness  of  their  world,  for  they  live  in 
ignorance  of  a  great  store  of  enjoyment  that  might 
be  theirs  for  the  asking.' 

•  I  cannot  love  the  man  who  does  not  love, 
As  men  love  light,  the  song  of  happy  birds.' 

I  have  seen  a  mother  mouse  in  a  moment  of 
peril  flee  from  her  home  among  the  falling  pieces 
of  a  cord- wood  pile,  and  disappear  under  the  roots 
of  a  neighbouring  oak.  I  have  seen  her  a  little 
later,  recovered  from  her  initial  dismay,  making 
her  way  back  again,  clambering  along  among  the 
tangled  timbers,  stopping  now  and  then  to  look 
and  listen,  her  eyes  wild  and  anxious,  and  her 
whole  little  body  quaking  with  excitement.  I 
have  seen  her  go  among  the  ruins  of  her  dwelling, 
take  a  poor  little  squeaking  young  one  in  her 
mouth,  and  hurry  away  with  it  to  the  gloomy 
refuge  in  the  roots  of  the  oak.  I  have  watched 
her  return  again  and  again,  each  time  taking  in 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       185 

her  careful  teeth  the  tiny  body  of  a  babe,  until  five 
mouthfuls  of  precious  pink  were  safely  lodged 
within  the  fortress  of  the  oak.  And  I  could  as 
soon  believe  that  woman,  when  she  saves  her 
children  from  some  fearful  harm,  is  a  soulless 
machine  as  think  that  that  brave  little  wood- 
mother,  out  there  alone  under  the  trees,  snatching 
her  darlings  from  the  jaws  of  death,  was  a  heroine 
without  sense  or  feeling.  That  little  hairy  mother 
with  four  feet  and  bead-like  eyes  loved  her  young 
ones  in  just  the  same  way  and  for  just  the  same 
reason  as  a  human  mother  loves  her  young  ones. 
She  looked  upon  her  babies,  in  all  probability, 
with  the  same  mother-love  and  tenderness  as 
a  human  mother  looks  upon  hers,  and  felt  in 
miniature,  with  evil  hovering  above  them,  the 
same  consternation  a  woman  feels  when  destruc- 
tion reaches  out  after  those  that  are  nearest  and 
dearest.  And  when  it  was  all  over,  when  the  good 
angel  of  deliverance  had  finally  spread  its  healing 
white  wings  over  that  afflicted  family,  the  heart  of 
that  little  rodent  was  doubtless  soothed  by  the 
same  joy  as  that  which,  in  the  hour  of  deliverance, 
calms  the  hearts  of  humankind. 

Ants  tend  their  fields,  gather  their  harvests, 
domesticate  other  insects,  and  keep  slaves.  They 
help  each  other  bear  heavy  burdens,  extricate  each 
other  from  misfortune,  speak  to  each  other  when 
they  meet,  and  bury  their  dead.  They  build  roads 
and  bridges,  and  manifest  wonderful  engineering 
skill  in  their  construction.  They  even  tunnel 
under  rivers.  They  go  far  from  home,  and  find 


i86         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

their  way  back  again.  They  inhabit  towns,  and 
build  splendid  and  spacious  palaces.  Each  ant 
knows  every  other  citizen  of  its  own  town,  and  an 
ant  from  any  other  town  is  immediately  recognised 
as  a  foreigner.  Ants  have  their  overseers  of  indus- 
trial enterprises,  and  regular  hours  for  work  and 
sleep.  The  ant  is  the  most  pugnacious  of  all 
animals,  and  the  most  muscular  compared  with 
its  size.  It  will  boldly  attack  the  biggest  creature 
that  walks  if  this  creature  invades  its  home.  It 
will  fasten  its  mandibles  into  an  enemy,  and  allow 
itself  to  be  torn  to  pieces  without  relaxing  its  hold. 
Among  some  savage  tribes,  certain  species  of  ants 
are  said  to  be  used  as  surgeons.  Infuriated  ants  are 
allowed  to  fasten  their  mandibles  on  the  opposite 
edges  of  a  gash,  and  in  this  way  the  wound  is 
closed.  The  ants  are  decapitated,  and  their  bodi- 
less heads  with  their  relentless  jaws  serve  as 
stitches  to  the  wound.  Ants  have  holidays  and 
athletic  festivals.  On  such  occasions  they  romp 
and  chase  each  other  and  play  hide-and-seek  like 
children.  They  stand  on  their  hind-legs,  embrace 
each  other  with  their  fore-limbs,  grasp  each  other 
by  the  feet  or  antennae,  pull  each  other  down  the 
entrances  to  their  towns,  wrestle  and  roll  over  on 
the  sand,  and  so  on — all  in  the  friendliest  manner. 
It  is  greatly  to  the  credit  of  these  little  people  that 
no  observer  has  ever  yet  known  them  to  become 
so  inventively  helpless  or  so  athletically  hard  up 
as  to  play  slug-ball.  Ants  educate  their  young, 
and  practise  the  fundamental  principles  of  human 
states  and  societies.  Forel,  the  great  Swiss  student 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       187 

of  ants,  says  that  several  hundred  nests  are  some- 
times united  into  a  single  confederation.  Each 
ant  knows  every  other  ant  of  the  entire  con- 
federation, and  they  all  take  part  in  the  common 
defence.  Haeckel  says,  speaking  of  social  evolu- 
tion in  ants,  that  the  aboriginal  ants  of  the  Chalk 
Age  had  as  little  idea  of  the  division  of  labour  and 
organisation  of  modern  ant  states  as  paleolithic 
flint-chippers  had  of  the  complexity  and  organisa- 
tion of  twentieth-century  civilisation.  '  If  we  take 
an  ant's  nest,  we  not  only  see  that  work  of  every 
description — rearing  of  progeny,  foraging,  build- 
ing, rearing  of  aphides,  and  so  on — is  performed 
according  to  the  principles  of  voluntary  mutual 
aid,  but  we  must  also  recognise,  with  Forel,  that 
the  fundamental  feature  of  the  life  of  many  species 
of  ants  is  the  obligation  of  every  ant  to  share  its 
food,  already  swallowed  and  partly  digested,  with 
every  member  of  the  community  which  may  apply 
for  it.  Two  ants  belonging  to  the  same  nest  or 
to  the  same  confederation  of  nests  will  approach 
each  other,  exchange  a  few  movements  with  the 
antennae,  and  if  one  of  them  is  hungry  or  thirsty 
— and  especially  if  the  other  has  its  crop  full — it 
immediately  asks  for  food.  The  individual  thus 
requested  never  refuses.  It  sets  apart  its  man- 
dibles, takes  a  proper  position,  and  regurgitates  a 
drop  of  transparent  fluid,  which  is  licked  up  by 
the  hungry  ant.  Regurgitating  food  for  others  is 
so  prominent  a  feature  in  the  life  of  the  ants,  and 
it  so  constantly  recurs  both  for  feeding  hungry 
comrades  and  for  feeding  larvae,  that  Forel  con- 


i88         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

siders  the  digestive  tube  of  ants  to  consist  of  two 
different  parts,  one  of  which — the  posterior — is  for 
the  special  use  of  the  individual,  and  the  other — 
the  anterior  part — is  chiefly  for  the  use  of  the 
community.  If  an  ant  which  has  its  crop  full  has 
been  selfish  enough  to  refuse  to  feed  a  comrade,  it 
will  be  treated  as  an  enemy.  If  the  refusal  has 
been  made  while  its  kinsfolks  were  fighting  with 
some  other  species,  they  will  fall  upon  the  greedy 
individual  with  greater  vehemence  even  than  upon 
the  enemies  themselves.  All  this  has  been  con- 
firmed by  the  most  accurate  observations  and 
experiments '  (20). 

Ants  keep  slaves.  And  the  slaves,  in  some  in- 
stances, carry  their  masters  about,  feed  them, 
groom  them,  and  attend  to  their  every  want, 
just  as  human  lackeys  do  helpless  aristocrats. 
In  some  species  the  institution  of  slavery  is  so 
old  that  the  physical  structures  of  the  masters 
have  been  modified  until  the  masters  are  phy- 
sically unable  to  feed  themselves,  and  will  perish 
from  hunger,  though  surrounded  by  food,  if  they 
are  left  to  themselves.  The  brain  of  the  ant,  as 
Darwin  says,  is  one  of  the  most  wonderful  bits 
of  matter  in  the  universe.  It  is  scarcely  one- 
fourth  the  size  of  the  head  of  a  pin,  yet  it  is  the 
seat  of  the  most  astonishing  wisdom  and  activity. 
If  human  intelligence  were  as  great,  compared 
with  the  mass  of  the  human  brain,  as  is  the  ant's, 
man  would  be  several  hundred  times  as  wise  as  he 
is  now,  and  would  then  probably  not  fall  far  short 
of  that  state  of  erudition  which  the  average  man 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       189 

imagines  he  already  represents.  Ants  remember, 
and  a  fact  becomes  impressed  by  repetition,  show- 
ing that  the  faculty  of  memory  in  ants  is  governed 
by  the  same  laws  as  is  this  faculty  in  man.  Sir 
John  Lubbock  found  it  necessary  to  teach  his  ants 
the  way  by  repeating  the  lesson  where  the  way 
was  long  or  unusual.  *  Sensation,  perception,  and 
association  follow  in  the  social  insects,  on  the 
whole,  the  same  fundamental  laws  as  in  the  verte- 
brates, including  ourselves.  Furthermore,  atten- 
tion is  surprisingly  developed  in  insects  '  (Forel). 
Ants  keep  standing  armies,  make  alliances,  and 
maraud  neighbouring  states.  They  have  their 
wars,  civil  and  foreign,  and  their  massacres  and 
enslavements  of  the  conquered.  But  they  have 
never  got  so  low  yet,  so  far  as  anyone  knows,  as 
to  hypocritically  prosecute  their  conquests  in  the 
name  of  God  and  humanity.  The  battlefields  of 
ants  resemble  the  carnage-plains  of  men,  strewn 
with  ghastly  corpses  and  covered  with  the  head- 
less and  dying.  And  the  accounts  of  their  expedi- 
tions— their  going  forth  in  regular  columns,  with 
captains,  scouts,  and  skirmish  lines,  their  battles, 
and  their  return  laden  with  plunder  and  captives 
— read  like  the  grisly  tales  of  human  history. 
Ants  perform,  in  short,  about  all  the  antics  of 
civilised  man,  except  maltreating  the  females  and 
drinking  gin.  And  shall  we  say  their  civilisation 
is  less  real  because  it  is  miniature  and  because  it 
is  carried  on  far  below  the  Brobdingnagian  con- 
templations of  man  ?  '  When  we  see  an  ant-hill 
tenanted  by  thousands  of  industrious  inhabitants, 


igo        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

excavating  chambers,  forming  tunnels,  making 
roads,  guarding  their  home,  gathering  food,  feeding 
the  young,  tending  their  domestic  animals,  each 
one  fulfilling  its  duties  industriously  and  without 
confusion,  it  is  difficult  altogether  to  deny  them 
the  gift  of  reason  or  to  escape  the  conviction  that 
their  mental  powers  differ  from  those  of  men  not 
so  much  in  kind  as  in  degree '  (Lubbock). 

The  industrious  and  gifted  bee,  with  its  wonder- 
ful social  system,  in  advance  even  of  that  of  the 
most  enlightened  societies  of  men;  the  generous 
horse,  who  thinks  and  feels  so  much  more  than 
the  clowns  who  maul  him  ever  suspect ;  the  artful 
spider,  that  confirmed  waylayer  lurking  in  his  lair 
of  silk ;  the  soft  and  predaceous  cat ;  the  timid- 
hearted  hare,  poor  hounded  little  dweller  of  the 
fields  and  stream-sides ;  the  beautiful  and  vivacious 
squirrel ;  the  lowly  lady-bug ;  the  cautious  fox ; 
the  irascible  serpent,  so  cruelly  misunderstood  by 
men ;  the  patient  camel ;  the  scornful  peafowl ; 
the  indomitable  goat;  the  grave  and  vindictive 
elephant;  the  ingenious  beaver,  the  woodman  of 
the  primeval  wilderness;  the  lordly  and  polygamous 
cock ;  the  maternal  hen ;  the  wary  trout,  beset 
everywhere  by  the  villainous  traps  of  impostors ; 
the  bride-like  butterfly ;  the  delicate  antelope  and 
deer;  and  the  sturdy,  incorruptible  ox — all  of 
these  beings  have  within  them  souls  composed 
primarily  of  the  same  elements  as  those  that 
compose  the  souls  of  men. 

Ground- wasps  have  been  observed  to  use  tiny 
stones  as  hammers  in  packing  the  dirt  firmly  over 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       191 

their  nests — a  very  remarkable  act  of  intelligence, 
since  the  use  of  tools  is  not  common  even  among 
the  higher  mammals  (13).  Fishes  have  been 
taught  to  assemble  at  the  ringing  of  a  bell,  and 
toads  and  tortoises  to  come  at  the  call  of  their 
favourite  friends.  An  alligator  which  was  kept 
tame  for  several  years  became  so  much  attached 
to  its  master  that  '  it  followed  him  about  the 
house  like  a  dog,  scrambling  up  the  stairs  after 
him,  and  showing  much  affection  and  docility.' 
The  favourite  friend  and  companion  of  this 
alligator  was  the  cat ;  and,  whenever  the  cat 
stretched  herself  on  the  floor  in  front  of  the  fire, 
the  alligator  would  lie  down  beside  her,  with  its 
head  on  the  cat,  and  go  to  sleep.  '  When  the  cat 
was  absent,  the  alligator  was  restless,  but  it  always 
appeared  happy  when  the  cat  was  near  it '  (12). 

Wolves  and  foxes  sometimes  cooperate  with 
each  other  in  their  hunting  expeditions,  somewhat 
as  men  do  in  theirs.  One  of  their  number  will 
crouch  in  ambush  by  the  side  of  a  road  known  to 
be  used  by  hares  or  other  small  animals,  and  leap 
on  the  unsuspecting  fugitives  when  driven  that 
way  by  others  of  the  hunting  band.  Many  animals 
post  sentinels  when  they  eat  or  sleep  or  engage  in 
other  hazardous  undertakings,  and  these  sentinels 
show  a  good  deal  of  discrimination  in  distinguish- 
ing between  animals  that  are  friendly  and  tnose 
that  are  not.  Beavers  not  only  build  lodges  to 
live  in,  but  also  construct  dams  to  keep  the  water 
in  which  the  villages  are  located  at  a  certain  height. 
The  outlet  of  these  dams  is  carefully  regulated, 


iga         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

being  regularly  lessened  and  enlarged  to  suit  the 
supply  of  water  in  the  stream.  The  trees  used  by 
the  beavers  in  their  enterprises  are  felled  by  them 
along  the  margins  of  the  stream,  and  floated  to 
the  place  where  they  are  used.  In  old  com- 
munities, where  the  supply  of  timber  near  the 
stream  has  been  exhausted,  artificial  canals  are 
cut  by  these  indomitable  engineers  for  use  in  the 
transportation  of  their  materials.  These  excava- 
tions are  made  at  a  great  cost  of  labour  and  for 
the  deliberate  purpose  of  enabling  the  builders  to 
accomplish  that  which  they  could  not  accomplish 
in  any  other  way.  '  In  executing  this  purpose,' 
says  Romanes,  'there  is  sometimes  displayed  a 
depth  of  engineering  forethought  over  details  of 
structure  required  by  the  circumstances  of  special 
localities  which  is  even  more  astonishing  than  the 
execution  of  the  general  idea'  (10).  When,  for 
instance,  a  canal  has  been  carried  so  far  from  the 
original  water-supply  that,  owing  to  the  rising 
ground,  it  cannot  be  continued  without  a  very 
great  expenditure  of  effort  in  digging,  a  second 
dam  is  built  higher  up-stream,  and  with  water 
drawn  from  this  the  canal  is  continued  on  at 
a  higher  level.  Sometimes  a  third  dam  is  built 
above  the  second,  and  the  canal  again  continued 
at  a  still  higher  level  before  the  valuable  timber  of 
the  higher  grounds  is  reached.  These  enterprising 
rodents  also  carve  sometimes  enormous  channels 
across  the  necks  of  land  formed  by  winding  rivers, 
to  serve  as  cut-offs  in  travel  and  transportation. 
And  yet  all  of  these  things — all  of  the  intelli- 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       193 

gence,  feeling,  and  ingenuity  displayed  by  the 
non-human  races — are  still  lumped  together  by 
belated  psychologists  under  the  head  of '  instinct,' 
by  which  is  meant  a  blind,  unconscious  knack  of 
doing  the  right  thing  without  in  any  way  realising 
what  is  being  done  or  what  it  is  being  done  for ! 
The  principle  in  accordance  with  which  mind  is 
denied  to  non-human  beings  would,  if  carried  to 
its  legitimate  conclusions,  make  machines  out  of 
all  of  us,  and  limit  the  possession  of  conscious 
intelligence  to  the  individual  who  promulgates 
the  theory.  The  attitude  assumed  by  many 
psychologists  toward  the  mental  faculties  of 
inferior  races  reminds  one  of  Heine's  interview 
with  the  old  lizard  at  Lucca.  In  the  discussion 
which  ensued  between  the  poet  and  the  reptile, 
the  poet  dropped  the  words,  '  I  think.'  '  Think !' 
snapped  the  lizard  with  a  sharp,  aristocratic  tone 
of  profound  contempt — '  think !  Which  of  you 
thinks  ?  For  3,000  years,  wise  sir,  I  have  investi- 
gated the  spiritual  functions  of  animals,  and  I 
have  made  men  and  apes  the  special  objects  of 
my  study.  I  have  devoted  myself  to  these  queer 
creatures  with  as  great  zeal  and  diligence  as 
Lyonnet  to  his  caterpillars.  And  as  the  result  of 
my  researches,  I  can  assure  you  no  man  thinks. 
Now  and  then  something  occurs  to  him,  and 
these  accidentally  occurring  somethings  he  calls 
thoughts,  and  the  stringing  of  them  together  he 
calls  thinking.  But  you  can  take  my  word  for  it, 
no  man  thinks — no  philosopher  thinks.  And,  so 
far  as  philosophy  is  concerned,  it  is  mere  air  and 

13 


I94         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

water,  like  pure  vapours  in  the  sky.  There  is, 
in  reality,  only  one  true  philosophy,  and  that 
is  engraven  in  eternal  hieroglyphics  on  my  own 
tail'  (n). 

This  attitude  of  the  lordly  saurian  toward  the 
human  race  is  a  stinging  burlesque  on  the  anthro- 
pocentric  conceit  which  perverts  all  of  man's  views 
of  the  other  orders  of  life. 

It  is  not  contended  that  non-human  beings  are 
psychically   identical   with   human  beings.     The 
races  of  men  are  not  psychically  identical  with 
each  other.     The   difference  between  the   intel- 
lectual splendours  of  a  Spencer  evolving  volumes 
of  the  profoundest  philosophy  and  the  mind  of  an 
Australian  who  cannot  count  six,  or  between  the 
understanding  of  an  Edison,  the  wizard  of  the 
electrical   world,   and    that    of   the    South    Sea 
islanders,  who,  when   Captain   Cook  gave  them 
some  English  nails,  planted  them  in  the  hope  of 
raising  a  new  crop,  is  almost  infinite.     The  lowest 
races  of  men  have  neither  superstition  nor  the 
power  of  abstract  thought   as  have  the  higher 
races.     They  have  a  word  for  black  stone,  white 
stone,  and  brown  stone,  but  no  word  for  stone ; 
for  elm-tree,  oak-tree,  and  the  like,  but  no  word 
for  tree.     As   Kingsley  says,  '  It  is  difficult  to 
believe   that  a  dog  does  not  form   as   clear  an 
abstract  idea  of  a  tree  as  these  people  do.'    There 
are  human  beings  living  in  the  forests  of  Asia, 
Africa,  and  Australasia  that  wander  about  from 
place  to  place  in  herds  without  chief,  law,  weapons, 
or  fixed  habitations.     They  go  naked,  mate  by 


THE  COMMON-SENSE  VIEW       195 

chance,  and  climb  trees  like  monkeys.  Some  of 
these  races  know  nothing  of  fire,  religion,  or  a 
moral  world,  chatter  to  each  other  like  apes,  and 
live  on  such  natural  products  as  roots,  fruits, 
serpents,  mice,  ants,  and  honey.  One  of  these 
creatures,  we  are  told,  will  lie  flat  on  his  front  for 
an  hour  by  the  runway  of  a  field-mouse,  waiting 
for  a  chance  to  snatch  up  the  little  creature  when 
it  comes  along  and  eat  it.  Dozens  of  such  de- 
graded races  are  mentioned  by  Biichner  in  his 
'  Man :  Past,  Present,  and  Future,'  and  by  Sir 
John  Lubbock  in  his  '  Origin  of  Civilisation.' 

Non-human  beings  have,  as  a  rule,  neither  the 
psychic  variety  nor  the  intensity  of  highe.r  humans. 
And  it  is  not  contended  that  in  language,  science, 
and  superstition  they  are  capable  of  being  com- 
pared with  the  foremost  few  of  civilised  societies, 
any  more  than  savages,  especially  the  lowest 
savages,  are  capable  of  such  comparison.  But  it 
is  maintained  that  the  non-human  races  of  the 
earth  are  not  the  metallic  and  soulless  lot  of 
fixtures  they  are  vulgarly  supposed  to  be ;  that 
they  are  just  as  real  living  beings,  with  just  as 
precious  nerves  and  just  as  genuine  feelings,  rights, 
heartaches,  capabilities,  and  waywardnesses,  as  we 
ourselves  ;  and  that,  since  they  are  our  own  kith 
and  kindred,  we  have  no  ri^ht  whatever,  higher 
than  the  right  of  main  strength  (which  is  the 
right  of  devils),  to  assume  them  to  be,  and  to 
treat  them  as  if  they  were,  our  natural  and  legiti- 
mate prey. 

13—2 


196         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

IV.  The  Elements  of  Human  and  Non-human 
Mind  Compared. 

The  analysis  of  human  mind  and  the  compari- 
son of  its  elements  or  powers  with  the  powers 
of  non-human  mind  corroborate  the  conclusions 
already  arrived  at  through  observation  and  deduc- 
tive inference.  The  chief  powers  of  the  mind  ol 
man  are  sensation,  memory,  emotion,  imagination, 
volition,  instinct,  and  reason.  All  of  these  faculties 
are  found  in  non-human  beings,  some  of  them 
developed  to  a  much  higher  degree  than  they  are 
in  man,  and  some  of  them  to  a  much  lower. 

Sensation -is  the  effect  produced  on  the  mind 
when  a  sense  organ  is  affected  in  some  way  by 
external  stimuli.  Sensation  is  the  lumber  of  the 
mind,  the  raw  material  out  of  which  are  elaborated 
all  other  forms  of  consciousness.  The  chief  species 
of  sensation  are  those  of  sight,  sound,  smell,  taste, 
and  feeling.  The  original  sense  was  feeling,  and 
out  of  this  sense  were  evolved  the  other  four. 
The  organs  of  seeing,  hearing,  smelling,  and 
tasting  are  therefore  modifications  of  the  skin, 
which  is  the  organ  of  original  sense.  The  fact 
that  in  all  animals,  down  almost  to  the  very 
beginnings  of  life,  sense  organs  exist,  suggests  that 
sensation  may  be  almost,  if  not  quite,  coextensive 
with  animal  life.  All  mammals,  birds,  reptiles, 
amphibians,  and  fishes  have  the  same  special  sense 
organs  as  man,  and  the  organs  of  sight,  sound, 
taste,  and  smell  occupy  in  all  vertebrates  the  same 
relative  positions  in  the  head.  Birds  see  better 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         197 

than  any  other  animals,  and  carnivora  smell 
better.  Ruminants  see,  hear,  and  smell  with 
great  acuteness.  Fishes  also  see  and  hear  well ; 
and  the  wings  of  the  bat  are  so  exceedingly  sen- 
sitive that  it  will  move  about  blindfolded  and  with 
ears  stopped  with  cotton  almost  as  unerringly  as 
when  aided  by  sight  and  sound.  Insects  have 
smell,  sight,  and  taste  well  developed,  as  is  shown 
by  their  keen  appreciation  of  the  colours,  perfumes, 
and  flavours  of  flowers.  They  also  hear.  Stridu- 
lation  proves  this.  Worms  have  eyes  and  ears, 
and  land-leeches  scent  the  approach  of  their  prey 
at  a  long  distance.  The  starfish  and  the  medusa 
respond  to  all  the  five  classes  of  stimuli  which 
affect  the  five  senses  of  man,  and  nervous  sub- 
stance is  found  in  all  animals  above  the  sponge. 

Memory  is  the  power  of  retaining  or  recognising 
past  states  of  consciousness.  The  power  to  retain 
impressions  follows  in  origin  close  upon  the  power 
to  receive  impressions.  Memory  is  the  historic 
faculty  of  the  mind — the  power  of  the  mind  to 
store  up  its  experiences — and  is  found  in  nearly 
all  animals.  The  lowly  limpet,  whose  world  is  a 
seaside  rock,  will  come  back  from  its  little  roam- 
ings  time  after  time  to  the  same  rude  lodge  from 
which  it  set  out.  Bees  remember  where  they  get 
honey  or  sugar  months  afterwards,  and  when  it  is 
necessary  will  sometimes  go  back  to  the  old  home 
hive  which  they  left  the  year  before.  Ants  retrace 
their  steps  after  making  long  journeys  from  their 
nest,  and  are  able  in  some  way  to  recognise  their 
friends  after  months  of  separation.  The  stickle- 


198        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

back  (fish)  knows  the  way  back  to  his  nest,  although 
he  has  been  absent  several  hours.  Fishes  return 
and  hatch  their  young  year  after  year  in  the  same 
waters;  birds  come  back  to  their  old  nesting- 
places  ;  and  horses  remember  their  way  along 
devious  roads  over  which  they  have  not  been  for 
years.  Horses  used  in  the  delivery  of  milk,  or  in 
other  occupations  in  which  they  are  accustomed 
to  travel  daily  over  about  the  same  route,  come  in 
time  to  remember  every  alley,  street,  and  stopping- 
place  of  the  whole  round  almost  as  accurately 
as  their  drivers.  Darwin's  dog  remembered  and 
obeyed  him  after  an  absence  of  five  years.  The 
power  of  dogs,  squirrels,  and  other  animals  of 
remembering  where  they  have  long  before  cached 
food  is  indeed  wonderful.  A  squirrel  will  come 
down  out  of  a  tree  when  the  earth  is  covered  to 
a  depth  of  several  inches  with  lately  fallen  snow 
and  hop  away,  without  the  slightest  hesitancy  or 
mistake,  to  the  exact  spot  where  it  has  months 
before  stored  its  mid-winter  acorns.  A  lion  has 
been  known  to  recognise  its  keeper  after  seven 
years  of  separation,  and  an  elephant  obeyed  all 
his  old  words  of  command  on  being  recaptured 
after  fifteen  years  of  jungle  life.  The  similarity  of 
memory  in  other  animals  to  the  same  faculty  in 
man  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  memory  everywhere 
is  governed  by  the  same  laws.  In  all  animals, 
including  man,  memory  is  strengthened  by  repe- 
tition— that  is,  impressions  are  always  deepened 
and  confirmed  by  being  made  over  and  over.  A 
parrot  or  a  raven  masters  a  new  sentence  by 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         199 

working  at  it  and  saying  it  over  and  over  again, 
just  as  a  boy  memorises  his  rules  and  catechisms. 
Imagination  is  the  picturing  power  of  the  mind. 
In  its  lowest  stages  of  manifestation  it  is  akin  to 
memory.  Imagination,  however,  in  its  higher 
reaches,  not  only  reimages  previous  impressions, 
but  combines  them  in  new  and  original  relations. 
Imagination  is  displayed  in  dreams,  images,  de- 
lusions, anticipation,  and  sympathy.  It  also  fur- 
nishes wings  for  speculation  and  reason.  Spiders, 
when  they  attach  stones  to  their  webs  to  steady 
them  during  anticipated  gales,  probably  exercise 
imagination.  The  tame  serpent  which  was  carried 
away  from  its  master's  house  and  found  its  way 
back  again,  though  the  distance  was  one  hundred 
miles,  no  doubt  carried  in  its  imagination  vivid 
pictures  of  its  old  home  (10).  Cats,  dogs,  horses, 
and  other  animals  dream,  and  parrots  talk  in  their 
sleep.  Horses  and  cattle  sometimes  stampede  at 
imaginary  objects,  and  often  distort  real  objects 
into  imaginary  monsters.  When  a  horse  at  night 
takes  fright  at  a  big  black  stump  by  the  roadside, 
he  no  doubt  imagines  it  to  be  some  terrible  creature 
ready  to  eat  him  up  if  he  should  go  near  it,  just 
as  a  timid  child  does  in  the  same  circumstances. 
There  is  a  great  difference  in  horses  in  this  respect, 
just  as  there  is  among  children  and  men,  some  of 
them  taking  fright  at  every  unusual  thing,  while 
others  are  more  bold  or  stolid.  The  cat  playing 
with  a  ball  of  yarn  converts  it  by  means  of  its 
imagination  into  an  object  of  prey,  just  as  a  girl 
converts  a  doll  into  a  baby,  or  a  boy  changes  a 


200         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

stick  into  a  steed.  Sympathy  is  the  putting  or 
picturing  of  one's  self  in  the  place  of  another,  and 
by  means  of  the  imagination  sharing  or  simulating 
the  psychic  conditions  of  that  other.  This  high 
and  holy  exercise  of  the  imagination  is  exhibited 
by  horses,  cattle,  dogs,  deer,  elephants,  monkeys, 
and  birds — in  fact,  by  nearly  all  animals  as  far 
down  as  the  fishes  and  insects. 

Emotion  is  the  stirring  of  the  sensibilities  by 
way  of  the  intellect  or  the  imagination.  The 
following  emotions  are  found  in  non-human 
beings :  fear,  surprise,  affection,  pugnacity,  play, 
pride,  anger,  jealousy,  curiosity,  sympathy,  emula- 
tion, resentment,  appreciation  of  the  beautiful, 
grief,  hate,  cruelty,  joy,  benevolence,  revenge, 
shame,  remorse,  and  appreciation  of  the  ludicrous. 
Excepting  the  emotions  of  conscience  and  religion, 
which  are  really  compounds,  with  fear  as  the  main 
ingredient,  this  list  of  non-human  emotions  is  co- 
extensive with  the  list  of  human  emotions.  Many 
of  these  emotions  germinate  low  down  in  the 
animal  kingdom,  fear,  anger,  sexuality,  and 
jealousy  all  being  found  in  fishes  and  in  the 
higher  invertebrates.  In  the  higher  vertebrates 
many  of  these  emotions  are  almost  as  strong  as 
they  are  in  men.  Does  anyone  who  has  felt  the 
throbbing  sides  of  a  frightened  puppy  or  hare 
have  any  doubt  that  these  creatures  suffer  the 
keenest  agony  of  fear  ?  Apes  have  been  known  to 
fall  down  and  faint  when  suddenly  confronted  by 
a  snake,  so  great  is  their  instinctive  horror  of 
serpents ;  and  gray  parrots,  which  are  extremely 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         201 

nervous  birds,  have  been  known  to  drop  from  their 
perch  unconscious  under  the  influence  of  great 
fear  (14). 

The  horse  is,  perhaps,  of  all  animals,  the  one 
which  occasionally  gives  itself  over  most  com- 
pletely to  the  emotion  of  fear,  as  everyone  who 
has  witnessed  the  terrible  abandon  of  a  runaway 
team  can  testify.  Ants,  fishes,  birds,  cats,  dogs, 
horses,  monkeys,  porpoises,  and  many  other 
animals  play.  Young  kittens,  colts,  and  puppies 
enjoy  a  scuffle  about  as  well  as  boys  do.  Pugnacity 
originates  among  the  spiders  and  insects,  and  is 
highly  developed  in  the  ant,  cock,  and  bulldog. 
This  emotion  is  strong  in  the  males  of  nearly  all 
vertebrates.  Anyone  who  has  observed  the  vigi- 
lance displayed  by  fishes  in  protecting  their  nests 
can  have  little  doubt  that  these  comparatively 
primitive  beings  possess  pugnacity.  I  was  one 
evening  floating  in  a  boat  by  the  edge  of  a  Long 
Island  pond  just  over  a  village  of  perches.  Each 
nest  was  guarded  by  an  assiduous  male,  who 
hovered  over  it  vigilantly,  or  darted  this  way  and 
that  to  drive  off  the  piscatorial  hoi  polloi  hanging 
about  the  neighbourhood,  ready  to  slip  in  at  the 
first  opportunity  and  eat  the  eggs.  Just  to  see 
what  would  happen,  I  put  my  hand  down  into 
the  water  and  moved  it  slowly  toward  one  of  the 
nests.  To  my  surprise,  the  guardian  of  the  nest, 
instead  of  fleeing  in  alarm,  proceeded  to  show 
fight.  It  chased  my  hand  away  time  after  time, 
and  when  the  hand  was  not  removed  it  would  nip 
it  vigorously,  not  once  simply,  but  two  or  three 


202         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

times  if  necessary,  and  each  time  with  increasing 
energy.  It  contended  with  the  courage  of  a  little 
hero.  I  pushed  it  and  jostled  it  about,  and  even 
took  it  in  my  hand  and  lifted  it  clear  out  of  the 
water.  To  my  amazement,  on  getting  back  into 
the  water,  it  returned  promptly  to  the  attack.  It 
fought  until  it  was  really  fagged,  for  its  onsets 
were  at  last  much  feebler  than  at  first.  I  came 
away  after  twenty  minutes,  leaving  the  little  hero 
in  triumphant  possession  of  his  charge. 

Among  some  species  of  monkeys  several  indi- 
viduals will  join  together  in  overturning  a  stone 
for  the  possible  ants'  eggs  under  it ;  and,  when  a 
burying  beetle  has  found  a  dead  mouse  or  bird,  it 
goes  and  gets  its  companions  to  help  it  in  the 
interment  (20).  Crows  show  benevolence  by 
feeding  their  blind  and  helpless  companions,  and 
monkeys  adopt  the  orphans  of  deceased  members 
of  their  tribe.  Brehm  saw  two  crows  feeding  in 
a  hollow  tree  a  third  crow  which  was  wounded. 
They  had  evidently  been  doing  this  for  some  time, 
for  the  wound  was  several  weeks  old.  Darwin 
tells  of  a  blind  pelican  which  was  fed  upon  fishes, 
which  were  brought  to  it  by  its  friends  from  a 
distance  of  thirty  miles  (15).  The  devotion  of 
cedar-birds  to  each  other  and  their  kindness  to  all 
birds  in  distress  are  well  known  to  every  student 
of  ornithology.  Olive  Thorne  Miller  tells  of  a 
cedar-bird  that  raised  a  brood  of  young  robins 
that  had  been  left  orphans  by  the  accidental 
killing  of  the  parents.  Weddell  saw  more  than 
once  during  his  journey  to  Bolivia  that  when  a 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND        203 

herd  of  vicunas  were  closely  pursued  the  strong 
males  covered  the  retreat  of  the  weaker  and  less 
swift  members  of  the  herd  by  lagging  behind  and 
protecting  them  (20). 

A  remarkable  instance  of  altruism  which  he 
once  saw  exhibited  by  the  king-crabs  in  a  London 
aquarium  is  mentioned  by  Kropotkin  in  his  work 
on  '  Mutual  Aid  a  Factor  in  Evolution.'  One  of 
these  crabs  had  fallen  on  its  back  in  a  corner  of 
the  tank.  And  for  one  of  these  great  creatures, 
with  its  saucepan  carapace,  to  get  on  its  back 
is,  even  in  favourable  circumstances,  a  serious 
matter.  The  seriousness  was  increased  in  this 
instance  by  an  iron  bar,  which  hindered  the 
normal  activities  of  the  unfortunate  crustacean. 
*  Its  comrades  came  to  the  rescue,  and  for  one 
hour's  time  I  watched  how  they  endeavoured  to 
help  their  fellow-prisoner.  They  came  two  at 
once,  pushed  their  friend  from  beneath,  and  after 
strenuous  efforts  succeeded  in  lifting  it  upright. 
But  then  the  Ton  bar  prevented  them  from  achiev- 
ing the  worl  of  rescue,  and  the  crab  again  fell 
heavily  on  its  back.  After  many  attempts,  one  of 
the  helpers  wert  into  the  depth  of  the  tank  and 
brought  two  other  crabs,  who  began  with  fresh 
forces  the  same  pushing  and  lifting  of  their  help- 
less comrade.  We  stayed  in  the  aquarium  foi 
more  than  two  hours,  and,  when  leaving,  came  to 
cast  a  glance  upon  the  tank.  The  work  ol 
attempted  rescue  still  continued.  Since  I  saw 
that  I  cannot  refuse  credit  to  the  observation 
quoted  by  Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin  that  the  common 


204         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

crab  during  the  moulting  season  stations  a  sentinel, 
an  unmolted  or  hard-shelled  individual,  to  prevent 
marine  enemies  from  injuring  moulted  individuals 
in  their  unprotected  state.'  Walruses  go  to  the 
defence  of  a  wounded  comrade  when  summoned 
by  its  cries  for  help.  Romanes  tells  of  a  gander 
who  acted  as  a  guardian  to  his  blind  consort, 
taking  her  neck  gently  in  his  mouth  and  leading 
her  to  the  water  when  she  wanted  to  take  a  swim, 
and  after  allowing  her  to  cruise  for  a  time  under 
his  guidance  and  care,  conducting  her  back  home 
again  in  the  same  thoughtful  manner.  When 
goslings  were  hatched,  this  remarkable  gander 
seemed  to  realise  the  inability  of  the  mother  to 
look  after  them,  for  he  took  charge  of  them  as  ii 
they  were  his  own,  convoying  them  to  the  water- 
side, and  lifting  them  carefully  out  of  the  ruts 
and  pits  with  his  bill  whenever  they  got  into 
difficulty  (10). 

The  disposition  to  go  to  the  aid  of  a  fellow  in 
trouble  is  one  of  the  most  characteristic  traits  in 
the  psychology  of  the  swine.  A  single  squeal  of 
distress  from  even  the  scrawniest  member  of  a 
swine  herd  will  bring  down  on  the  one  who  causes 
this  distress  the  hair-raising  wrath  of  every  porker 
within  hearing.  This  trait  has  been  considerably 
reduced  by  domestication,  and  in  those  varieties 
in  which  degeneracy  has  gone  farthest  it  scarcely 
exists.  But  it  is  exceedingly  strong  in  all  wild 
hogs.  Animals  as  low  in  the  scale  of  development 
and  as  proverbially  cold  as  snakes  have  been 
known,  when  educated  and  treated  with  kindness, 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND        205 

to  manifest  considerable  affection  for  their  friends 
and  masters.  Nearly  all  domestic  animals  display 
a.  good  deal  of  affection,  not  only  to  their  young, 
but  to  adult  members  of  their  own  kind  and  to 
their  human  masters.  The  devotion  of  the  dog  to 
man  is  without  a  parallel  anywhere.  It  has  been 
said  that '  the  dog  is  the  only  thing  on  this  earth 
that  loves  you  more  than  he  loves  himself.'  When 
dogs  become  so  much  attached  to  their  masters  or 
mistresses  that  they  pine  and  die  on  being  separated 
from  them,  they  show  beyond  any  question  that 
they  have  feelings  which,  in  intensity,  are  not 
inferior  to  those  possessed  by  the  more  highly 
developed  men  and  women.  And  this  has  hap- 
pened time  after  time. 

A  pathetic  story  of  love  and  of  its  tragic  close 
came  last  year  out  of  the  Maine  woods.  Two 
moose,  who  had  been  tracked  all  day  by  a  couple 
of  human  tigers,  were  finally  overtaken,  when  one 
of  them  fell  pierced  by  two  rifle-balls.  The 
remaining  moose,  instead  of  dashing  off  into  the 
forest,  stood  still,  lowered  its  head,  and  sniffed  at 
its  fallen  companion.  Then,  raising  its  antlers 
high  into  the  air,  it  bellowed  loudly.  As  the  cry 
of  the  great  creature  echoed  through  the  forest,  it 
also  fell  at  the  discharge  ot  the  rifles.  It  was 
found  on  examination  afterwards  that  the  first 
moose  was  blind,  and  that  the  second  one,  which 
had  neglected  to  leave  it  for  safety,  was  its  pilot. 

My  father  once  owned  a  cow  who  contracted  a 
strong  affection  for  my  sister.  This  cow,  who 
showed  on  many  occasions  and  in  many  ways  her 


ao6         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

highly  developed  emotional  nature,  would  scarcely 
allow  anyone  else  than  my  sister  to  milk  her.  She 
always  presented  herself  to  my  sister  as  soon  as 
she  was  let  into  the  lot  in  order  to  be  milked  first, 
and  she  was  so  i^alous  of  this  privilege  that  if  it 
were  not  accorded  to  her  she  would  stand  with 
her  head  down  and  give  vent  to  her  unhappi- 
ness  in  low  moans.  After  she  was  milked  she 
would  follow  her  human  friend  around  from  one 
cow  to  another,  in  order  to  be  as  near  her  as 
possible.  She  knew  my  sister's  voice  from  that 
of  everyone  else,  and  would  always  low  a  response 
and  come  to  her  when  called  by  name,  even  though 
she  were  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away  in  the  pasture. 
Romanes  tells  somewhere  of  a  band  of  apes  that 
were  being  pursued  by  dogs  when  a  young  ape 
was  cut  off  from  the  rest  and  was  about  to  be 
killed  by  the  dogs.  The  chief  of  the  band,  seeing 
the  peril  of  the  young  one,  went  deliberately  back 
and  rescued  it. 

Many  animals  show  that  they  possess  a  rudi- 
mentary sense  of  humour  by  the  pranks  and 
tricks  which  they  play  on  each  other  and  on 
human  beings.  The  monkey  is  the  prince  of  non- 
human  jokers,  but  dogs,  cats,  horses,  elephants, 
and  other  animals  have  enough  of  this  sense 
to  have  books  written  about  it.  A  monkey  has 
been  observed  to  slyly  pass  his  hand  back  of  a 
second  monkey  and  tweak  the  tail  of  a  third  one, 
and  then  composedly  enjoy  himself  while  the 
resentment  of  the  injured  monkey  expended  itself 
on  the  innocent  middle  one.  Many  monkeys 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND   ,     207 

enjoy  entertaining  their  friends  with  grimaces,  by 
carrying  a  cane,  putting  a  tin  dish  on  their  heads, 
or  other  droll  antics.  These  intelligent  animals 
have  a  sufficiently  high  appreciation  of  the  ludi- 
crous to  dislike  ridicule.  Like  human  beings, 
they  can't  endure  being  laughed  at,  and  get  mad 
if  they  are  made  the  victims  of  a  joke.  Romanes' 
monkey  was  one  day  asked  to  crack  a  nut  for  the 
amusement  of  a  visitor.  The  nut  turned  out  to 
be  a  bad  one,  and  the  melancholy  look  of  disap- 
pointment on  the  monkey's  face  caused  the  visitor 
to  laugh.  The  insulted  monkey  flew  into  a  rage, 
and  hurled  the  nut  at  the  offending  scoffer,  then 
the  hammer,  and  finally  the  coffee-pot  which 
simmered  on  the  grate  fire  (10).  Darwin  tells  of 
a  baboon  in  the  Zoological  Gardens  of  London 
who  always  became  infuriated  every  time  his 
keeper  took  out  a  letter  or  book  and  read  aloud  to 
him.  On  one  occasion  when  Darwin  was  present 
the  baboon  became  so  furious  that  he  bit  his  own 
leg  until  it  bled  (15). 

The  emotion  variously  known  as  shame,  regret, 
repentance,  and  remorse,  is  not  common  among 
the  non-human  races.  It  is  found  sometimes  in 
dogs  and  monkeys,  and  especially  in  educated 
anthropoids.  But  this  emotion  is  exceedingly 
rare  among  savages,  and  is  not  at  all  universal 
even  among  civilised  societies  of  men.  Some 
animals  manifest  self-restraint,  which  is  an  ex- 
ceedingly elite  quality  of  mind,  and  one  not  so 
common  as  it  might  be  even  among  the  higher 
breeds  of  mankind.  By  restraint  is  meant  the 


208         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

inhibition  of  a  desire  or  instinct  in  the  presence  of 
circumstances  tending  to  render  the  desire  or 
instinct  active — and  this  is  obedience,  and  the 
beginning  of  morality.  A  dog  that  will  not  chase 
a  hare  in  the  presence  of  his  master  may  do  so  in 
his  absence.  I  taught  my  guinea-pigs  to  abstain 
from  certain  food  in  their  presence  which  they 
wanted  very  much,  and  which  they  would  have 
eaten  if  they  had  not  been  educated  to  let  it  alone. 
Sympathy  is  the  most  beautiful  of  all  terrestrial 
emotions.  It  is  manifested,  sometimes  to  an 
exceedingly  touching  degree,  by  all  the  highest 
races  of  animals.  No  other  instances  than  those 
already  given  can  be  mentioned  here.  It  is  suffi- 
cient to  say  fhat  the  difference  between  the  savage 
— whose  sympathies  are  so  feeble  that  he  has  been 
known  to  knock  his  own  child's  brains  out  for 
dropping  a  basket,  and  who  puts  his  aged  parents 
to  death  in  order  to  avoid  the  burden  of  maintain- 
ing them,  and  whose  sympathies  seldom  extend 
beyond  his  family  or  tribe — and  civilised  men  and 
women,  who  feel  actual  pain  when  in  the  presence 
of  those  who  suffer,  and  whose  sympathies  some- 
times include  all  sentient  creation,  is  much  greater 
than  that  between  the  savage  and  many  non- 
human  animals.  The  frail,  narrow,  fantastic 
character  of  human  sympathy  is  the  most  mourn- 
ful fact  in  human  nature.  '  Man's  inhumanity  to 
man  makes  countless  thousands  mourn,'  and  his 
inhumanity  to  not-men  makes  the  planet  a  ball  of 
pain  and  terror,. 

Volition  is  the  power  of  the  mind  to  act  execu- 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         209 

lively.  Or,  perhaps,  it  is  the  resultant  of  the 
impulses  actuating  a  mind  at  any  particular 
instant.  Whatever  volition  is,  it  is  the  same 
thing  in  the  insect  as  in  the  man.  Non-human 
beings  have  been  observed  to  pause  and  deliberate 
and  to  make  wise  and  momentous  decisions  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye.  A  chased  hare  will 
decide  to  squat,  to  go  straight  ahead,  or  to  do 
something  else  which  the  emergency  demands, 
just  as  unmistakably  as  a  human  fugitive.  In  the 
sense  of  being  the  power  to  act  differently  from 
the  manner  in  which  a  being  actually  does  act, 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  freewill.  The  will  of  the 
worm  is  just  as  free  as  the  will  of  the  judge — not 
in  the  sense  that  it  is  as  varied  in  the  directions 
of  its  activity,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  character 
of  its  activities  is  determined  inevitably  by  the 
character  of  its  antecedents.  All  will,  whether 
human  or  non-human,  invariably  acts  in  the 
direction  of  the  strongest  motive,  just  as  a  stone 
or  a  river  invariably  moves,  if  it  moves  at  all,  in 
the  direction  of  the  strongest  tendency  or  force. 
It  is  impossible  that  this  should  be  otherwise. 
For,  if  the  will  in  any  case  elects  to  overthrow 
this  fact  by  arbitrarily  discarding  a  stronger 
motive  for  a  feebler,  in  the  very  motive  of  the 
election  are  concealed  elements  which  transform 
the  feebler  motive  into  the  stronger.  All  motion, 
voluntary  and  involuntary — the  motion  of  bullets, 
beings,  societies,  and  suns — takes  place  along  the 
lines  of  least  arrest.  Every  being  is  compelled  to 
decide  as  he  does  decide  and  to  act  as  he  does  act 

14 


210        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

by  the  inherited  tendencies  of  his  own  nature  and 
the  tendencies  of  the  environment  in  which  he 
exists.  And  if  any  being,  after  having  passed 
through  life,  were  again  placed  back  at  the  begin- 
ning of  life  and  endowed  with  the  same  nature  as 
before,  and  were  acted  upon  through  life  by  sur- 
roundings identical  with  those  he  had  previously 
met,  he  would  act — that  is,  he  would  exercise  his 
will — in  precisely  the  same  way  in  every  particular 
as  he  had  previously  done.  To  deny  these  things 
is  to  assert  that  the  conduct  of  living  beings  is 
without  law,  and  that  psychology  and  sociology 
are  not  sciences. 

Non-human  beings,  all  of  the  higher  ones,  have 
the  same  brain  and  nervous  apparatus  as  man, 
and  in  their  involuntary  phenomena  they  closely 
resemble  human  beings.  Aim  a  pretended  blow 
near  the  eyes  of  a  dog  or  a  horse  and  it  will  wink 
involuntarily,  just  as  a  human  being  does.  Sever 
the  spinal  cord  of  a  man  or  a  frog,  and  irritate 
the  feet  of  each,  and  they  will  each  manifest  the 
same  phenomena  of  reflex  action,  drawing  their 
feet  away  each  time  from  the  stimulus. 

Instinct  and  reason  are  forms  of  intelligence. 
Intelligence  is  the  adaptation  of  acts  to  ends. 
Intelligence  is  manifested  by  all  organisms,  both 
plants  and  animals,  and  may  be  either  conscious 
or  unconscious.  Plant  intelligence  and  reflex 
action  are  forms  of  unconscious  intelligence.  Plant 
intelligence,  or  the  adaptation  of  acts  to  ends  by 
plants,  is  manifested  by  plants  in  the  shifting  of 
their  positions  when  in  need  of  light  in  order  to 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND        211 

obtain  as  large  a  supply  as  possible  of  the  essential 
sunshine ;  in  devices,  such  as  traps  and  flowers, 
for  utilising  the  juices  and  services  of  insects ;  in 
germinating  and  growing  away  from,  instead  of 
toward,  the  centre  of  the  earth ;  in  discriminating 
between  this  and  that  kind  of  food ;  and  in  a 
thousand  other  ways.  Plant  intelligence  is  all 
explicable  in  terms  of  chemistry  and  physics,  and 
is,  so  far  as  is  known,  unaccompanied  by  conscious- 
ness. Reflex  action  is  chemical  affinity  aided  by 
the  co-ordinating  powers  of  nerve  tissue.  The 
vital  processes  of  all  animals,  from  the  lowest  to 
the  highest,  and  many  other  highly  habitual  and 
highly  essential  operations,  are  carried  on  by  reflex 
action.  Reflex  action  in  animals,  like  plant  intel- 
ligence, is  unconscious. 

Instinct  and  reason  are  conscious.  Instinct  is 
inherited  intelligence — intelligence  manifested  in- 
dependently of,  and  prior  to,  experience  and 
instruction.  '  Instinct,'  says  Romanes,  '  is  reflex 
action  into  which  has  been  imported  the  element 
of  consciousness '  (i).  It  is  exhibited  by  the  babe 
when  it  nurses  the  mother's  breast ;  by  the  chick 
when  it  pecks  its  way  out  through  the  shell  of  the 
egg ;  by  animals  generally,  including  man,  in  their 
solicitude  for  their  young ;  by  the  parent  bird  in 
incubation ;  and  by  all  beings  when  they  seek 
food  in  obedience  to  the  impulse  of  hunger.  Our 
conception  of  the  mental  processes  of  non-humans 
is  as  yet  very  primitive,  owing  to  our  limited 
means  of  information  and  the  erroneous  influence 
on  our  judgments  of  traditional  ways  of  thinking; 

14—a 


212         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

and  much  that  is  attributed  by  us  to  instinct  is 
not  instinct  at  all,  but  is  acquired  by  the  young 
through  education  imparted  by  the  elders.  Parent 
birds  have  often  been  seen  teaching  their  young 
ones  to  fly,  and  no  doubt  a  good  deal  of  the 
migratory  acumen  manifested  by  birds  is  nothing 
but  custom  and  tradition  handed  down  to  each 
younger  generation  by  the  old  and  experienced. 
A  large  part  of  the  knowledge  of  mankind  (or 
what  passes  for  knowledge)  consists  of  habits 
and  hobbies,  customs  and  traditions,  impressed 
upon  each  new  generation  by  the  generation 
which  produced  it.  Each  generation  of  men 
seems  to  feel  that  whenever  it  creates  a  new 
generation  it  has  got  to  pile  on  to  this  new 
generation  all  of  the  fool  notions  which  have 
been  acquired  from  the  past,  amplified  by  its  own 
inventions.  And  when  we  come  to  know  other 
animals  better,  there  is  practically  no  doubt  that 
we  shall  find  that  a  large  part  of  what  we  now 
call  instinct  and  look  upon  as  congenital  will,  on 
closer  and  more  rational  examination,  be  found  to 
be  nothing  but  the  pedagogical  effects  of  early 
environment.  Professor  Poulton,  of  Oxford,  who 
has  made  many  experiments  on  just-born  birds, 
says  that  young  chicks  learn  to  fear  the  hawk  and 
to  interpret  the  oral  warnings  of  the  mother. 
Cats  teach  their  young  to  play  with  their  prey 
in  that  cruel  manner  so  characteristic  of  all  the 
Felidae,  as  I  have  myself  observed  more  than 
once.  A  mother  cat  will  carry  a  live  mouse  into 
the  presence  of  her  kittens  and  lie  down  and  play 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         213 

with  it,  tossing  it  playfully  into  the  air,  poking  it 
with  her  paw  when  it  does  not  move,  and  arresting 
it  when  it  starts  to  run  away,  the  kittens  all  the 
time  looking  on,  but  never  once  attempting  to 
take  the  mouse.  After  awhile  the  mother  hands 
the  captive  over  to  the  kittens,  who  go  through  the 
same  performance  one  after  another.  After  they 
have  practised  on  it  until  the  unfortunate  creature 
is  almost  dead,  the  old  cat  will  probably  walk  over 
to  where  the  mouse  is  and  eat  it  up.  The  whole 
thing  is  a  school.  The  mouse  is  obviously  not 
intended  as  food  for  the  young,  but  to  be  used 
simply  to  impart  instruction  to  them. 

*  In  popular  writings  and  lectures  some  or  all  of 
the  following  activities  of  ant-life  are  commonly 
ascribed  to  instinct :  The  recognition  of  members 
of  the  same  nest ;  powers  of  communication ; 
keeping  aphides  for  the  sake  of  their  sweet  secre- 
tions ;  collection  of  aphid  eggs  ii,  October,  hatch- 
ing them  out  in  the  nest,  and  taking  them  in  the 
spring  to  the  daisies  on  which  they  feed,  for 
pasture ;  slave-making  and  slave-keeping,  which, 
in  some  cases,  is  so  ancient  a  habit  that  the 
enslavers  are  unable  even  to  feed  themselves ; 
keeping  insects  as  beasts  of  burden — e.g.,  a  kind 
of  plant-bug  to  carry  leaves ;  keeping  beetles,  etc., 
as  domestic  pets ;  habits  of  personal  cleanliness — 
one  ant  giving  another  a  brush-up,  and  being, 
brushed  up  in  return ;  habits  of  play  and  recrea- 
tion ;  habits  of  burying  their  dead ;  the  storage  of 
grain  and  nipping  the  budding  rootlet  to  prevent 
further  germination;  the  habit  of  Texan  ants  of 


214         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

preparing  a  clearing  around  their  nest,  and,  six 
months  later,  harvesting  the  ant-rice — a  kind  of 
grass  of  which  they  are  particularly  fond — even 
seeking  and  sowing  the  grain  which  shall  yield  the 
harvest ;  the  collection  by  other  ants  of  grass  to 
manure  the  soil,  on  which  there  grows  a  species 
of  fungus  upon  which  they  feed ;  the  military 
organisation  of  the  ecitons  of  Central  America; 
and  so  forth.  But  to  class  all  of  these  activities 
of  the  ant  as  illustrations  of  instinct  is  a  survival 
of  an  old-fashioned  method  of  treatment. 

*  Suppose  that  the  intelligent  ant  were  to  make 
observations  on  human  behaviour  as  displayed  in 
one  of  our  great  cities  or  in  an  agricultural  district. 
Seeing  so  great  an  amount  of  routine  work  going 
on  around  him,  might  he  not  be  in  danger  of 
regarding  all  this  as  evidence  of  hereditary  instinct  ? 
Might  he  not  find  it  difficult  to  obtain  satisfactory 
evidence  of  the  fact  that  this  routine  work  has  to 
some  extent  to  be  learned?  Might  he  not  say 
(perhaps  not  wholly  without  truth),  "I  can  see 
nothing  whatever  in  the  training  of  these  beings 
to  fit  them  for  their  life-work.  The  training  of 
their  children  has  no  more  apparent  bearing  upon 
the  activities  of  their  after-life  than  the  feeding  of 
our  grubs  has  on  the  duties  of  ant-life.  They 
seem  to  fall  into  the  routine  of  life  with  little  or 
no  preparatory  training  as  the  periods  for  the 
manifestation  of  the  various  instincts  arrive.  If 
learning  thereof  there  be,  it  has  so  far  escaped 
our  observation.  And  such  intelligence  as  their 
activities  evince  (and  many  of  them  do  show 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         215 

remarkable  adaptations  to  uniform  conditions  of 
life)  would  seem  to  be  rather  ancestral  than  of  the 
present  time,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  many 
of  the  adaptations  are  directed  rather  to  past  con- 
ditions of  life  than  to  those  which  now  hold  good. 
In  the  presence  of  new  emergencies  to  which  their 
instincts  have  not  fitted  them,  these  poor  creatures 
are  often  completely  at  a  loss.  We  cannot  but 
conclude,  therefore,  that,  although  acting  under 
somewhat  different  and  less  favourable  conditions, 
instinct  occupies  fully  as  large  a  space  in  the 
psychology  of  man  as  it  does  in  that  of  the  ant, 
while  human  intelligence  is  far  less  unerring  and 
hence  markedly  inferior  to  our  own." 

'Are  these  views  much  more  absurd  than  the 
views  of  those  who,  on  the  evidence  which  we 
at  present  possess,  attribute  all  the  activities  of 
ant-life  to  instinct  ?'  (21) 

Reason  is  the  power  of  adapting  means  to  ends 
which  is  acquired  from  experience  or  instruction. 
All  animals  that  profit  by  experience,  therefore,  or 
that  learn  from  instruction — that  is,  are  teachable 
— exercise  reason. 

The  line  of  demarkation  between  instinct  and 
reason  is  a  mezzotint,  reason  being  often  instinc- 
tive, and  instinct  being  as  frequently  flavoured 
with  judgment.  '  Instinct  is  usually  regarded  as 
a  special  property  of  the  lower  animals,  and  con- 
trasted with  the  conscious  reason  of  man.  But 
just  as  reason  may  be  looked  upon  as  a  higher 
form  of  the  understanding  or  intellect,  and  not  as 
something  essentially  distinct  from  them,  BO  a 


216         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

closer  examination  shows  that  instinct  and  the 
conscious  understanding  do  not  stand  in  absolute 
contrast,  but  rather  in  a  complex  relation,  and 
cannot  be  sharply  marked  off  from  each  other.' 
It  is  instinct  that  urges  the  bird  to  build  its  nest ; 
but  when  birds  whose  habit  it  is  to  build  on  the 
ground  learn,  on  the  introduction  of  cats  into  the 
neighbourhood,  to  change  their  nesting-places  to 
the  tree-tops,  intelligence  and  thought  are  neces- 
sary. The  first  time  Cavy  (one  of  my  guinea-pigs) 
smelled  a  cat,  she  was  almost  scared  to  death. 
She  jumped  back  from  it  as  if  she  had  come  in 
contact  with  a  red-hot  stove,  and  screamed  and 
kept  on  screaming,  and  shot  down  under  my  coat 
as  if  she  were  about  to  be  crucified.  After  a  little 
while  I  tried  to  pull  her  out,  but  she  refused,  and 
kept  hiding.  The  second  time  the  kitten  was  pre- 
sented to  her  the  result  was  the  same.  But  after 
two  or  three  days  of  association,  she  paid  little 
more  attention  to  it  than  to  the  other  guinea-pigs. 
She  had  never  seen  a  cat  before.  //  was  the  odour 
of  the  carnivore  that  terrified  her,  and  the  effect 
was  purely  instinctive.  But  instinct  was  soon 
modified  by  intelligent  experience.  (Poor  dear 
little  Cavy  I  I  wonder  where  she  is  now  I) 

Both  instinct  and  reason  (and  one,  too,  just  as 
much  as  the  other)  are  absolutely  dependent  upon 
processes  that  are  purely  mechanical — that  is, 
upon  brain  processes ;  and  brain  processes  depend 
upon  brain  structure,  which  is  inherited.  Hence, 
reason  is,  in  a  certain  sense,  as  truly  inherited  as 
instinct  is.  A  being  must  be  born  with  the 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         217 

particular  nervous  apparatus  by  means  of  which 
reasoning  is  carried  on,  or  with  the  power  or 
disposition  to  develop  this  apparatus,  or  he  will 
never  reason.  The  genius  of  the  partridge  in 
cajoling  the  passer-by  from  her  nest  is  called 
instinct,  but  it  is  not  more  inherited  than  was 
the  genius  of  Shakspere.  Experience  simply  calls 
into  being  that,  whatever  it  is  in  each  particular 
being,  which  is  inherited.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  took 
to  philosophy  and  Ole  Bull  to  music  not  less 
inevitably  than  the  duck  takes  to  water  or  the 
hound  to  hunting.  Reason  is,  hence,  inherited 
by  every  man,  who  has  it  as  truly  as  his  erect 
posture  and  plantigrade  feet.  There  is  something 
in  the  past  of  all  of  us  and  of  everything  which 
has  determined,  and  which  may  be  used  to  account 
for,  everything  that  to-day  exists  or  happens,  even 
to  the  style  and  behaviour  of  every  leaf  that 
flutters  in  the  forest,  and  to  the  eccentricities 
of  our  opinions  and  handwritings. 

Reason,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  here  used,  is 
found  feebly  in  the  oyster.  Oysters  taken  from 
a  depth  never  uncovered  by  the  sea  open  their 
shells,  lose  their  water,  and  quickly  perish.  But 
oysters  taken  from  the  same  depths,  if  kept  where 
they  are  occasionally  left  uncovered  for  short 
intervals,  learn  to  keep  their  shells  closed  and  to 
live  a  much  longer  period  out  of  the  water.  On 
the  coast  of  France  '  oyster  schools  '  exist,  where 
oysters  intended  for  inland  cities  are  educated  to 
keep  their  shells  closed  when  out  of  the  water  in 
order  to  enable  them  to  survive  the  desiccating 


218         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

exposures  of  the  overland  journey  (10).  This  act 
of  the  bivalve  is  probably  the  result  of  something 
like  a  vague  form  of  reason.  It  is  an  act  adapted 
to  the  accomplishment  of  a  definite  end,  and  the 
adapting  power  is  acquired  from  experience.  It 
is,  moreover,  reason  which  in  its  final  analysis 
does  not  differ  from  the  reason  displayed  by  the 
wisest  being  that  thinks.  Judgment,  forethought, 
common-sense,  inference,  ingenuity,  genius,  reason, 
and  abstract  thought,  are  all  exercises  of  the 
cognitive  or  perceptive  power  of  mind,  and  consist, 
all  of  them,  in  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  dis- 
cerning of  relations  among  stimuli.  The  dog  who 
adopts  a  cut-off  in  order  to  intercept  a  fleeing  hare 
performs  exactly  the  same  kind  of  intellectual 
process  as  the  mechanic  who  erects  a  windmill  in 
order  to  divert  the  energies  of  the  breeze,  or  the 
politician  who  adopts  a  particular  platform  to 
catch  votes.  '  A  perception  is  always  in  its 
essential  nature  what  logicians  term  a  conclusion, 
whether  it  has  reference  to  the  simplest  memory 
of  the  past  sensation  or  to  the  highest  product  of 
abstract  thought.  For,  when  the  highest  product 
of  abstract  thought  is  analysed,  the  ultimate 
elements  must  always  be  found  to  consist  in 
material  given  directly  by  the  senses ;  and  every 
stage  in  the  symbolic  construction  of  ideas,  in 
which  the  process  of  abstraction  consists,  depends 
on  acts  of  perception  taking  place  in  the  lower 
stages '  (i).  The  difference  among  the  perceptive 
acts  of  different  individuals  consists,  not  in  the 
different  kinds  of  intellectual  exercise,  but  in 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         219 

differences  among  the  materials  with  which  the 
perceptive  faculty  deals.  There  are  perceptions 
of  simple  sensations,  and  there  are  perceptions  of 
composite  sensations,  or  concepts — perceptions  of 
elementary  relations,  and  perceptions  of  compound 
and  elaborate  relations.  But  all  displays  of 
rational  faculty,  from  the  simple  judgment  of 
distance  by  the  dimness  and  distinctness  of  defini- 
tion and  the  size  of  the  visual  angle,  which  all 
higher  animals  are  compelled  to  make,  to  the 
labyrinthic  abstractions  of  the  logician,  consist 
in  nothing  in  addition  to  discriminations  among 
stimuli. 

Brehm  one  day  gave  one  of  his  apes  a  paper 
bag  with  a  lump  of  sugar  and  a  wasp  in  it.  The 
ape  in  getting  the  sugar  was  stung  by  the  wasp. 
From  that  day,  whenever  Brehm  gave  that  ape, 
or  any  other  ape  in  that  cage,  a  paper  package, 
the  animal,  before  opening  it,  took  the  precaution 
to  shake  the  package  at  his  ear  and  listen  to  find 
out  whether  or  not  there  was  a  wasp  inside  (18). 
Now,  such  an  act  of  intelligence  implies  several 
inferences.  A  train  of  thoughts  something  like 
this  must  have  passed  through  this  ape's  mind: 
'  Now,  if  one  wasp  can  sting,  so  can  another ;  and, 
if  a  man  can  deceive  me  once  by  wrapping  a  wasp 
in  a  paper  with  a  lump  of  sugar,  he  may  try  it 
again  ;  and,  if  one  man  will  attempt  such  a  thing, 
so  may  another ;  and,  if  men  will  attempt  it  on 
me,  they  may  attempt  it  on  my  friends  ;  so  I  will 
warn  my  friends  to  look  out  for  those  villainous 
chaps  outside.'  These  inferences  of  the  ape  are 


220         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

the  same  kind  of  generalisations  exactly  as  are 
made  by  men  everywhere  in  their  daily  lives.  And 
the  common-sense  inferences  made  by  ordinary 
people  in  their  every- day  affairs  are  precisely  the 
same  processes  of  reasoning  as  those  used  by 
scientists  and  philosophers.  Many  people,  like 
the  character  in  Moliere's  plays  who  was  sur- 
prised and  delighted  to  learn  that  he  had  been 
talking  prose  all  his  life,  are  surprised  on  hearing 
for  the  first  time  that  they  use  induction  and 
deduction  every  hour  almost  of  their  waking  lives. 
They  imagine  that  philosophers  must  have  some 
secret  and  superior  way  of  acquiring  their  con- 
clusions, different  from  what  ordinary  mortals 
have.  '  But  there  is  no  more  difference,'  says 
Huxley,  'between  the  mental  operations  of  a  man 
of  science  and  those  of  an  ordinary  person  than 
there  is  between  the  operations  and  methods 
of  a  grocer  weighing  out  his  goods  in  common 
scales  and  the  operations  of  a  chemist  in  perform- 
ing a  difficult  and  complex  analysis  by  means 
of  his  balance  and  finely  graduated  weights.  It 
is  not  that  the  scales  in  the  one  case  and  the 
balances  in  the  other  differ  in  the  principles  of 
their  construction  or  manner  of  working;  but 
the  beam  of  the  one  is  set  on  an  infinitely  finer 
axis  than  the  other,  and,  of  course,  turns  by 
the  addition  of  a  much  smaller  weight '  (16). 
And  the  difference  in  mental  method  between 
the  man  of  learning  and  the  ordinary  man  or 
woman  is  the  same  as  the  difference  between 
mature  men  and  children  and  between  men 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND        221 

generally  and  other  animals.  It  is  one  of  degree, 
not  of  kind.  The  philosopher,  the  clodhopper, 
and  the  ape,  all  use  precisely  the  same  methods 
of  reasoning,  differing  only  in  exactness  and  in 
the  materials  of  consciousness  dealt  with. 

Nearly  all  animals,  from  mollusks  to  men, 
reason — not  once  or  twice  in  a  lifetime,  but  the 
most  of  them  every  day  and  every  hour  of  their 
existence.  In  fact,  it  would  be  impossible  for  any 
animal  addicted  to  moving  about,  and  with  a 
delicate  and  easily  wrecked  organism,  to  long 
survive  in  a  world  like  this  without  that  elasticity 
of  action  which  reason  alone  can  impart.  Since 
they  live  in  the  same  world-conditions  as  human 
beings,  and  are  seeking  providence  for  substantially 
the  same  wants,  non- human  beings  manifest 
reason  in  the  same  general  directions  as  human 
beings  do — in  the  location  and  construction  of 
their  homes  and  fortresses,  in  the  arrest  of  their 
prey,  in  circumventing  their  enemies,  in  over- 
coming obstacles  and  surmounting  dangers,  in 
protecting  and  educating  their  young,  in  meet- 
ing the  emergencies  of  food  and  climate,  in 
the  wooing  of  mates  and  the  waging  of  wars, 
and  in  the  thousand  other  cases  where  they 
are  called  upon  in  their  daily  wanderings  and 
doings  to  deal  with  novel  and  unprecedented 
situations. 

When  wild  geese  are  feeding  there  is  said  to  be 
always  one  of  them  that  acts  as  sentinel.  This 
one  never  takes  a  grain  of  corn  while  on  duty. 
When  it  has  acted  awhile  it  gives  the  bird  next  to 


222         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

it  a  sharp  peck  and  utters  a  querulous  kind  of 
cry,  and  the  second  one  takes  its  turn.  This  is 
prudence,  or  forethought,  which  is  a  form  of 
reason.  When  swans  are  diving  there  is  generally 
one  that  stays  above  the  water  and  watches. 
Sentinels  have  alarm  sounds  of  various  kinds, 
which  they  give  to  signify  '  enemy.'  '  Ibex, 
marmots,  and  mountain  -  sheep  whistle ;  prarie- 
dogs  bark ;  elephants  trumpet ;  wild  geese  and 
swans  have  a  kind  of  bugle  call ;  rabbits  and 
sheep  stamp  on  the  ground ;  crows  caw ;  and 
wild  ducks  utter  a  low,  warning  quack.' 

In  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  March,  1901, 
is  an  account  of  a  series  of  experiments  on  the 
intelligence  of  the  turtle  made  by  Professor  Yerkes, 
of  Harvard.  The  turtle  was  placed  in  a  labyrinth, 
at  the  farther  end  of  which  was  a  comfortable  bed 
of  sand.  It  took  just  thirty-five  minutes  of  wander- 
ing for  the  turtle  to  reach  the  nest  the  first  time. 
But  in  the  second  trial  the  nest  was  reached  in 
fifteen  minutes,  and  by  the  tenth  trip  the  turtle 
was  familiar  enough  with  the  route  to  go  through 
in  three  and  one-half  minutes,  making  but  two 
mistakes.  The  turtle  was  afterwards  placed  in  a 
more  complex  labyrinth,  containing,  among  other 
features,  a  blind  alley  and  two  inclines.  The 
inclines  were  puzzles,  and  it  took  one  hour  and 
thirty-five  minutes  of  aimless  rambling  for  the 
wanderer  to  reach  its  nest  the  first  time.  But 
the  fifth  trip  was  made  in  sixteen  minutes,  and 
the  tenth  in  four  minutes,  which  was  not  far  from 
direct. 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         223 

These  experiments  show  that  animals  of  almost 
proverbial  density  may  learn  with  surprising 
quickness.  English  sparrows  and  other  avian 
inhabitants  of  the  city  learn  to  live  tranquilly 
along  the  busiest  thoroughfares,  exposed  to  all 
sorts  of  dangers,  and  subjected  to  what  would  be 
to  many  birds  the  most  terrifying  circumstances. 
Whizzing  trolleys,  tramping  multitudes,  and 
screaming  engines  have  no  terrors  for  them.  They 
simply  exercise  the  caution  necessary  to  keep  from 
being  run  over.  They  boldly  build  their  nests 
right  under  passing  elevated  cars,  where  the  roar 
is  sufficient  to  scare  the  life  out  of  an  ordinary 
country  bird.  I  have  seen  these  testy  little  chaps 
sit  and  feed  and  jabber  to  each  other  in  a  perfectly 
unconcerned  way  within  ten  or  fifteen  feet  of  a 
thundering  express  train.  They  do  not  do  these 
things  from  instinct  :  they  learn  to  do  them. 
They  know  that  a  diabolical-looking  locomotive 
is  harmless,  because  they  have  seen  it  before; 
and  they  know  that  an  insignificant  urchin  with 
a  savage  heart  and  a  sling  is  not  harmless,  and 
they  know  it  simply  because  they  have  previously 
had  dealings  with  him.  English  sparrows  will 
disappear  completely  from  a  neighborhood  if  a 
few  of  them  are  killed.  Cats,  dogs,  horses — all 
animals,  in  fact — acquire  during  life  a  fund  of 
information  as  to  how  to  act  in  order  to  avoid 
harm  and  extinction.  If  they  did  not,  they  would 
not  live  long.  And  they  do  it  just  as  man  does  it, 
by  memory  and  discrimination,  by  retaining  im- 
pressions made  upon  them,  and  acting  differently 


£24         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

when  an  impression  is  made  a  second,  third,  or 
thirteenth  time. 

Animals  of  experience  (including  men)  are  more 
skilful  in  adjusting  themselves  to  environmental 
exigencies  than  the  young  and  inexperienced, 
because  of  their  store  of  initial  impressions.  It 
is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that  young 
animals  are  more  easily  caught  or  killed  or  other- 
wise victimised  than  the  old  and  experienced. 
Many  animals,  however,  (and  a  good  many  men) 
are  able  to  profit  by  a  single  impression.  One 
.iose  of  tartar  emetic  is  generally  sufficient  to  cure 
an  egg-sucking  dog,  and  it  is  a  very  stupid  canine 
indeed  that  does  not  understand  perfectly  after 
one  or  two  experiences  with  a  porcupine  or  an 
unsavory  skunk.  '  The  burnt  child  dreads  the 
fire/  but  so  does  the  burnt  puppy.  Rengger  states 
that  his  Paraguay  monkeys,  after  cutting  them- 
selves only  once  with  any  sharp  tool,  would  not 
touch  it  again,  or  would  handle  it  with  the  greatest 
caution  (10).  Older  trout  are  more  wary  than 
young  ones,  and  fishes  that  have  been  much 
hunted  and  deceived  become  suspicious  of  traps. 
Rats,  martins,  and  other  animals  cannot  long  be 
trapped  in  the  same  way,  and  partridges  and  other 
birds  seldom  fly  against  telegraph-wires  the  second 
season  after  the  wires  are  put  up.  These  animals, 
however,  cannot  learn  to  avoid  these  dangers  from 
experience,  for  only  a  few  of  them  are  ever  caught 
or  struck.  They  must  learn  it  from  observing 
their  unfortunate  companions.  Everyone  who  has 
read  the  story  of  Lobo,  the  big  gray  wolf  of  the 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND         225 

Carrumpaw,  cannot  but  wonder  at  the  remarkable 
shrewdness  shown  by  this  old  leader  in  baffling 
for  years  the  tigers  that  hung  upon  his  tracks  (17). 
Nansen  states  that  the  seals,  before  man  invaded 
the  Arctics,  occupied  the  inner  ice-floes  to  avoid 
the  polar  bear,  but  after  man  came  they  took  to 
living  on  the  outer  floes  in  order  to  escape  the 
persecutions  of  this  new  and  more  fearful  enemy. 
Domestic  animals,  when  first  turned  out  in  new 
regions,  often  die  from  eating  poisonous  weeds, 
but  in  some  way  soon  learn  to  avoid  them.  Many 
animals,  when  pursuing  other  animals,  or  when 
being  pursued,  display  a  knowledge  of  facts  very 
little  understood  by  the  majority  of  mankind,  such 
as  of  places  where  scent  lies  or  is  obliterated,  and 
the  effects  of  wind  in  carrying  evidence  of  their 
presence  to  their  enemies.  The  hunted  roebuck 
or  hare  will  make  circles,  double  on  its  own  tracks, 
take  to  water,  and  fling  itself  for  considerable  dis- 
tances through  the  air  as  cleverly  as  if  it  had  read 
up  all  the  theory  of  scent  in  a  book.  According 
to  the  London  Spectator,  one  of  the  large  African 
elephants  in  the  Zoological  Gardens  of  that  city 
restores  to  its  entertainers  all  the  bits  of  food 
which  on  being  thrown  to  him  fall  alike  out  of  his 
reach  and  theirs.  He  points  his  proboscis  straight 
at  the  food,  and  blows  it  along  the  floor  to  the  feet 
of  those  who  have  thrown  it.  He  clearly  knows 
what  he  is  about,  for  if  he  does  not  blow  hard  enough 
to  land  the  food  the  first  time,  he  blows  harder 
and  harder  until  he  does.  The  cacadoos  (parrots) 
of  Australia,  before  descending  upon  a  field  or 

15 


226         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

orchard  in  search  of  food,  send  out  a  scouting 
party  to  reconnoitre  the  region  and  see  that  '  all 
is  well.'  Sometimes  a  second  party  is  sent.  If 
the  report  is  favourable,  the  whole  band  advance 
and  plunder  the  field  in  short  order.  These  birds 
are  exceedingly  wary  and  intelligent,  and  seldom 
make  mistakes.  But  'if  man  once  succeeds  in 
killing  one  of  them,  they  become  so  prudent  and 
watchful  that  they  henceforward  baffle  all  strata- 
gems '  (20).  A  short  time  ago  a  parrot  at  Wash- 
ington, New  Jersey,  saved  the  life  of  its  owner  by 
summoning  the  neighbours  to  his  relief.  Cries  of 
'Murder!'  'Help!'  'Come  quick!'  coming  from 
the  home  of  the  parrot,  attracted  the  attention  of 
neighbours,  who  ran  to  the  house  to  find  out  the 
cause.  '  They  found  the  owner  of  the  parrot  lying 
on  the  floor  unconscious,  bleeding  from  a  great 
gash  in  his  neck.  He  had  been  repairing  the 
ceiling,  and  had  fallen  and  struck  his  head  against 
the  stove.  It  required  six  stitches  to  close  the 
wound,  and  the  surgeon  said  that  in  only  a  few 
minutes  the  injured  man  would  have  been  dead. 
A  few  years  ago  this  parrot's  screams  awakened 
its  owner  in  time  to  arouse  his  neighbours  and 
save  them  from  a  fire  which  started  in  the  house 
next  door.' 

A  friend  of  mine,  who  is  thoroughly  reliable,  tells 
me  that  when  he  was  a  student  at  the  University 
of  Michigan  a  few  years  ago  one  of  the  professors 
of  zoology  there  had  a  dog  who  was  used  by  the 
department  for  experiments  in  digestion.  The  dog 
was  compelled  to  wear  a  tube  opening  downward 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND        227 

out  of  his  stomach,  and  soon  grew  very  weak  and 
emaciated  from  the  constant  loss  of  food,  which 
leaked  out  through  this  tube.  After  a  time,  how- 
ever, the  dog  was  observed  to  be  growing  unac- 
countably hale  and  strong.  He  was  watched,. and 
the  poor  creature  was  found  to  have  struck  upon 
an  ingenious  expedient  to  save  his  life.  On  eating 
his  meal,  he  would  go  out  to  the  barn,  and,  in 
order  to  prevent  the  artificial  escape  of  the  con- 
tents of  his  stomach,  would  lie  down  flat  on  his 
back  between  two  boxes  and  remain  there  until 
his  digested  food  had  passed  safely  beyond  the 
pylorus. 

A  few  months  ago,  John,  one  of  the  monkeys 
at  Lincoln  Park,  Chicago,  was  suffering  from  a 
terrible  abscess  on  the  cheek,  and  an  operation 
became  necessary  in  order  to  save  the  little  fellow's 
life.  It  was  a  pathetic  sight  to  see  the  look  of 
trust  in  the  monkey's  eyes  when  the  surgeon  was 
ready  to  begin  the  operation,  and  the  courage  and 
fortitude  displayed  by  the  sufferer  were  almost 
human.  At  the  first  touch  of  the  knife  the  monkey 
pressed  his  head  hard  against  the  knee  of  the 
assistant  and  grabbed  the  forefinger  of  each  of  the 
assistant's  hands,  just  as  a  person  does  who  is 
about  to  undergo  a  painful  operation.  The  swell- 
ing was  first  cut  open  and  washed  with  antiseptic, 
when  the  cheek-bone  was  scraped  and  a  small 
piece  of  it  removed.  After  being  again  washed 
in  antiseptic,  the  wound  was  sewed  up,  and  John 
was  lifted  gently  back  into  his  cage — not,  however, 
until  he  had  licked  the  hands  of  the  surgeon  and 

15—2 


228        THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

kissed  his  face  in  gratitude.  The  little  hero  never 
uttered  a  sound  from  the  time  the  knife  first 
touched  his  face  until  he  was  put  back  into  his 
cage.  A  similar  act  of  intelligence  is  recorded  of 
an  orang.  Having  been  once  bled  on  account  of 
illness,  and  not  feeling  well  some  time  afterward, 
this  orang  went  from  one  person  to  another,  and, 
pointing  to  the  vein  in  his  arm,  signified  his  desire 
to  have  the  operation  repeated.  Both  of  these 
instances  are  examples  of  reason  of  a  very  high 
order — of  a  higher  order,  indeed,  than  many 
children  and  some  grown  people  exhibit  in  similar 
circumstances.  The  chimpanzee,  Mafuca,  learned 
how  to  unlock  her  cage,  and  stole  the  key  and  hid 
it  under  her  arm  for  future  use.  After  watching  the 
carpenter  boring  holes  with  his  brad-awl,  she  took 
the  brad-awl  and  bored  holes  in  her  table.  She 
poured  out  milk  for  herself  at  meals,  and  always 
carefully  stopped  pouring  before  the  cup  ran  over. 
When  baboons  go  on  marauding  expeditions, 
they  show  that  they  realise  perfectly  what  they 
are  doing  by  moving  with  great  stealth.  Not  a 
sound  is  uttered.  If  any  thoughtless  youngster  so 
far  forgets  the  necessities  of  the  occasion  as  to  utter 
a  single  chatter,  he  is  given  a  reminder  in  the 
shape  of  a  box  on  the  ear.  '  A  certain  Mr.  Cops, 
who  had  a  young  orang,  gave  it  half  an  orange 
one  day,  and  put  the  other  half  away  out  of  its 
sight  on  a  high  press,  and  lay  down  himself  on 
the  sofa.  But  the  ape's  movements,  attracting  his 
attention,  he  only  pretended  to  go  to  sleep.  The 
creature  came  cautiously  and  satisfied  himself  that 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND        229 

his  master  was  asleep,  then  climbed  up  the  press, 
ate  the  rest  of  the  orange,  carefully  hid  the  peel 
among  the  shavings  in  the  grate,  examined  the 
pretended  sleeper  again,  and  then  went  and  lay 
down  on  his  own  bed.'  This  incident  is  recorded 
by  Tylor  in  his  '  Anthropology.'  '  And  such  be- 
haviour,' he  adds,  '  is  to  be  explained  only  by 
supposing  a  train  of  thought  to  pass  through  the 
brain  of  the  ape  somewhat  similar  to  what  we  our- 
selves call  reason.'  These  instances  of  undoubted 
intelligence  and  thought  might  be  added  to  almost 
without  number  if  there  was  room.  Ever}7  person 
nearly  who  has  been  in  the  world  any  length  of 
time,  and  has  had  occasion  to  associate  with  these 
so-called  '  machines,'  has  seen  for  himself,  often 
unexpectedly,  many  flashes  of  brightness  among 
them. 

It  has  been  said  that  man  differs  from  other 
animals,  and  is  superior  to  them  in  the  fact  that 
he  modifies  his  environment  while  other  animals 
do  not,  but  are  modified  by  environment.  Mr. 
Lester  F.  Ward  makes  this  distinction  in  his 
'  Pure  Sociology.'  The  distinction  is  no  nearer 
the  truth  than  other  distinctions  of  like  character 
that  have  from  time  to  time  been  drawn  between 
men  and  other  animals.  It  is  not  much  more 
than  half  true,  if  it  is  that,  and  does  not  by  any 
means  deserve  the  italics  awarded  to  it  by  this 
writer.  Many  races  of  non-human  beings  have  a 
far  greater  influence  on  their  environment  than 
many  races  of  men  have.  Many  tribes  oilmen 
wander  about  naked,  build  no  habitations,  make 


THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

no  weapons,  and  feed  upon  the  fruits,  roots,  insects, 
and  such  other  chance  morsels  as  they  can  pick 
up  from  day  to  day  in  their  wanderings.  Such 
races  are  far  inferior  in  constructive  activity  to 
the  birds,  who  build  elaborate  houses,  and  to  the 
beavers,  who  not  only  construct  substantial  dwell- 
ings, but  dam  rivers,  and  cut  down  trees  and 
transport  them  long  distances,  and  dig  artificial 
waterways,  to  be  used  as  aids  in  their  engineering 
enterprises.  Compare  the  elaborate  compartments 
of  the  Australian  bower-birds,  surrounded  with 
ornamented  and  carefully-kept  grounds,  with  the 
lean-to  of  many  savage  tribes,  made  by  sticking 
two  or  three  palm-leaves  in  the  ground  and  leaning 
them  against  a  pole.  Even  ants  plant  crops,  make 
clearings,  build  roads  and  tunnels,  etc.  It  must 
be  remembered,  too,  that,  however  affirmative  and 
masterful  a  race  of  men  may  become,  it  never 
succeeds,  and  never  can  succeed,  in  emancipating 
itself  from  the  influences  of  environment.  It  is 
true  that  with  the  growth  of  intelligence  among 
organic  forms  there  has  been  a  constant  transfer 
of  influence  from  the  environment  to  the  organism; 
but  this  transfer  began,  not  with  man  by  any 
means,  but  low  down  in  the  scale  of  animal  life. 

It  has  been  said  that  man  is  the  only  animal 
that  uses  tools.  But  this  is  not  true  either,  for 
animals  as  low  in  the  scale  of  development  as 
insects  have  been  known  to  use  tools.  At  least 
two  different  observers  testify  to  having  seen 
ground- wasps  use  small  stones  as  hammers  in 
packing  the  dirt  firmly  over  their  nests.  Spiders 


THE  ELEMENTS  OF  MIND        231 

use  stones  as  weights  to  steady  their  webs  in  times 
of  storm.  Orangs  throw  sticks  and  stones  at  their 
pursuers,  and  certain  tribes  of  Abyssinian  baboons, 
when  they  go  to  battle  with  each  other,  carry 
stones  as  missiles.  Monkeys  often  use  stones  to 
crack  nuts  with,  and  tame  monkeys  know  very 
well  how  to  use  a  hammer  when  it  is  given  to 
them.  In  the  London  Zoological  Gardens  a 
monkey  with  poor  teeth  kept  a  stone  hidden  in  the 
straw  of  its  cage  to  crack  i$s  nuts  with,  and  it 
would  not  allow  any  other  'monkey  to  touch  the 
stone.  '  Here,'  says  Darwin,  in  speaking  of  this 
case,  '  is  the  idea  of  property.'  Monkeys  also  use 
sticks  as  levers  in  prying  open  chests  and  lifting 
heavy  objects.  Cuvier's  orang  used  to  carry  a 
chair  across  the  room  and  stand  on  it  to  lift  the 
door-latch.  Chimpanzees,  who  are  very  fond  of 
making  a  noise,  have  been  seen  standing  around  a 
hollow  log  in  the  forest,  beating  it  with  sticks ; 
and  if  we  are  to  believe  Emin  Pasha,  these  in- 
genious parodies  of  men  sometimes  carry  torches 
when  they  go  at  night  on  foraging  expeditions. 
The  Indian  elephant,  when  travelling,  will  some- 
times turn  aside  and  break  off  a  leafy  branch  from 
a  roadside  tree  and  carry  it  along  in  its  trunk  to 
sweep  off  the  flies.  As  Dr.  Wesley  Mills  says  in 
his  work  on  '  The  Nature  and  Development  of 
Animal  Intelligence,'  '  It  was  formerly  believed 
that  animals  cannot  reason,  but  only  those  persons 
who  do  not  themselves  reason  about  the  subject, 
with  the  facts  before  them,  can  any  longer  occupy 
such  a  position.' 


232         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

V.  Conclusion. 

It  is  enough.  The  ancient  gulf  scooped  by 
human  conceit  between  man  and  the  other  animals 
has  been  effectually  and  forever  filled  up.  The 
human  species  constitutes  but  one  branch  in  the 
gigantic  arbour  of  life.  And  all  the  merit  and  all 
the  feeling  and  all  the  righteousness  of  the  world 
are  not,  as  we  have  been  accustomed  to  aver,  con- 
gested into  this  one  branch.  And  all  of  the  weak- 
ness and  deformity  are  not,  as  we  have  also  been 
anxious  to  believe,  found  elsewhere.  The  reluctance 
of  wrinkles  and  deformities  to  appear  in  the  pictures 
of  men,  and  of  strength  and  beauty  to  appear  in 
the  representations  of  the  other  races  of  the  earth, 
is  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  highly  elucidative 
fact  that  man  is  the  universal  portrait-painter. 
There  is  no  one  to  tell  man  what  he  is  and  how 
he  strikes  others,  and  hence  he  is  the  '  paragon  of 
creation  ' — the  inter-stellar  pet,  half  clay  and  half 
halo — the  image  and  pride  of  the  gods — the  flower 
and  gem  of  the  eternal  spheres.  Man  is  the  only 
professional  linguist  in  the  universe.  And  it  is 
fortunate  for  him  that  he  is.  For,  if  he  were  not, 
his  auditories  would  be  compelled  to  carry  to  his 
perceptive  centres  a  great  many  sentiments  he  now 
never  hears.  He  would  be  likely  to  hear  a  good 
deal  said,  and  said  with  a  good  deal  of  feeling, 
about  perpendicular  brigand — grandiloquent  kakis- 
tocrat  swelling  with  self-righteousness — rhetorical 
hideful  wrapped  in  pillage  and  gorged  with  decom- 
position— a  voluble  and  sanctimonious  squash  with 


CONCLUSION  233 

two  sticks  in  it.  The  definition  of  man  as  it 
appears  in  the  dictionary  of  the  donkey  probably 
runs  something  like  this :  '  Man  is  an  animal  that 
walks  on  its  hind-legs,  invents  adjectives  with 
which  to  praise  itself,  and  displays  its  greatest 
utility  in  proving  that  all  sharks  are  not  aquatic.' 
We  know  what  a  lion  looks  like  when  painted  by 
a  man,  but  human  eyes  have  never  yet  been 
allumined  by  the  sardonic  lineaments  of  a  man 
painted  by  a  lion.  Being  boiled  alive  in  order  to 
look  well  as  corpses  in  store-windows,  and  having 
wooden  pegs  thrust  into  our  muscles  and  left  there 
to  rot  for  a  week  or  two  to  keep  us  in  our  agony 
from  doing  something  desperate — we  know  what 
these  experiences  are  like  when  they  are  delegated 
to  lobsters,  and  we  take  no  more  serious  part  in 
them  than  to  insure  their  infliction,  but  we  are 
too  fervent  barbarians  to  bother  our  heads  about 
what  they  are  like  from  the  crustacean  point  of 
view. 

Let  us  be  candid.  Men  are  not  all  gentle  men 
and  humane,  and  not-men  are  not  all  inhuman. 
There  are  reptiles  in  broadcloth,  and  there  are 
warm  and  generous  hearts  among  those  peoples 
who  have  so  long  suffered  from  human  prejudice 
and  ferocity.  Let  us  label  beings  by  what  they 
are — by  the  souls  that  are  in  them  and  the  deeds 
they  do — not  by  their  colour,  which  is  pigment, 
nor  by  their  composition,  which  is  clay.  There 
are  philanthropists  in  feathers  and  patricians  in 
fur,  just  as  there  are  cannibals  in  the  pulpit  and 
saurians  among  the  money-changers.  The  golden 


234         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

rule  may  sometimes  be  more  religiously  observed 
in  the  hearts  and  homes  of  outcast  quadrupeds 
than  in  the  palatial  lairs  of  bipeds.  The  horse, 
who  suffers  and  serves  and  starves  in  silence,  who 
endures  daily  wrongs  of  scanty  and  irregular 
meals,  excessive  burdens  and  mangled  flanks, 
who  forgets  cruelty  and  ingratitude,  and  does 
good  to  them  that  spitefully  use  him,  and  submits 
to  crime  without  resistance,  misunderstanding 
without  murmur,  and  insult  without  resentment, 
is  a  better  Christian,  a  better  exemplar  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  than  many  church-goers, 
in  spite  of  the  creeds  and  interdictions  of  men. 
And  the  animal  who  goes  to  church  on  Sundays, 
wearing  the  twitching  skins  and  plundered  plumage 
of  others,  and  wails  long  prayers  and  mumbles 
meaningless  rituals,  and  gives  unearned  guineas 
to  the  missionary,  and  on  week-days  cheats  and 
impoverishes  his  neighbours,  glorifies  war,  and 
tramples  under  foot  the  most  sacred  principles 
of  morality  in  his  treatment  of  his  non-human 
kindred,  is  a  cold,  hard-hearted  brute,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  he  is  cunning  and  vainglorious,  and 
towers  about  on  his  hinders. 

There  are  lessons  that  may  be  learned  from 
the  uncorrupted  children  of  Nature — lessons  in 
simplicity  of  life,  straightforwardness,  humility, 
art,  economy,  brotherly  love,  and  cheerfulness — 
more  beautiful,  perhaps,  and  more  true  than  may 
sometimes  be  learned  from  the  stilted  and  Machia- 
vellian ways  of  men.  Would  you  learn  forgiveness  ? 
Go  to  the  dog.  The  dog  can  stand  more  abuse 


CONCLUSION  235 

and  forgive  greater  accumulations  of  wrong  than 
any  other  animal,  not  even  excepting  a  wife. 
About  the  only  thing  in  the  universe  superior  to 
the  dog  in  willingness  to  undergo  outrage  is  the 
human  stomach.  Would  you  learn  wisdom  and 
industry  ?  Go  to  the  ant,  that  tireless  toiler  of 
the  dust.  The  ant  can  do  that  which  no  man 
can  do — keep  grain  in  a  warm,  moist  atmosphere 
without  sprouting.  Would  you  learn  art  ?  Go 
to  the  bee  or  to  the  wild  bird's  lodge.  The  art 
of  the  honeycomb  and  of  the  hang-bird's  nest 
surpasses  that  of  the  cranny  of  the  savage  as 
the  Cathedral  of  St.  Peter  exceeds  the  cottage. 
Would  you  learn  socialism,  that  dream  of  poets 
and  the  hope  and  expectation  of  wise  men  ?  It  is 
actualised  around  you  in  thousands  of  insect 
communities.  The  social  and  economic  relations 
existing  in  the  most  highly  wrought  societies  of 
bees  and  wasps  are  fundamentally  the  ideal  rela- 
tions of  living  beings  to  each  other,  but  it  will 
require  millenniums  of  struggle  and  bloodshed 
for  men  to  come  up  to  them.  Would  you  learn 
curiosity — not  the  curiosity  that  gossips  and 
backbites,  but  the  curiosity  of  the  explorer  and 
searcher  after  knowledge  ?  Go  to  the  monkey. 
The  monkey  has  been  known  to  work  two  hours, 
without  pause,  utterly  unconscious  of  everything 
but  its  purposes,  trying  to  open  a  fettered  trunk 
lock  (10).  Would  you  learn  sobriety  ?  Go  not 
to  the  gilded  hells  of  cities,  where  men  die  like 
flies  in  gin's  vile  miasma.  Go  to  the  spring  where 
the  antelope  drinks.  Would  you  learn  chastity  ? 


236         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

Go  not  to  the  foul  dens  and  fiery  chambers  of 
men.  Go  to  the  boudoir  of  the  bower-bird,  or  to 
the  subterranean  hollow  where  the  wild  wolf  rears 
her  litter. 

Man  is  not  the  surpassingly  pre-eminent  indi- 
vidual he  so  actively  advertises  himself  to  be. 
Indeed,  in  many  particulars  he  is  excelled,  and 
excelled  seriously,  by  those  whom  he  calls  'lower.' 
The  locomotion  of  the  bird  is  far  superior  in  ease 
and  expedition  to  the  shuffling  locomotion  of  man. 
The  horse  has  a  sense  which  guides  it  through 
darkness  in  which  human  eyes  are  blind ;  and  the 
manner  in  which  a  cat,  who  has  been  carried  in  a 
bag  and  put  down  miles  away,  will  turn  up  at 
the  back-door  of  the  old  home  next  morning 
dumfounds  science.  The  eye  of  the  vulture  is  a 
telescope.  The  hound  will  track  his  master  along 
a  frequented  street  an  hour  behind  his  footsteps, 
by  the  imponderable  odour  of  his  soles.  The  cat- 
bird, without  atlas  or  geographic  manuals,  will 
find  her  way  back  over  hundreds  of  trackless 
leagues,  season  after  season,  to  the  same  old 
nesting-place  in  the  thicket.  Birds,  thousands  of 
them,  journey  from  Mexico  to  Arctic  America, 
from  Algiers  and  Italy  to  Spitsbergen,  from  Egypt 
to  Siberia,  and  from  Australia  and  the  Polynesian 
Islands  to  New  Zealand,  and  build  their  nests  and 
rear  their  young,  year  after  year,  in  the  same  vale, 
grove,  or  tundra.  The  nightingale,  who  pours 
out  his  incomparable  lovesong  in  the  twilight  of 
English  lanes  during  May  and  June,  winters  in 
the  heart  of  Africa;  and  some  birds  nest  within  the 


CONCLUSION  237 

Arctic  Circle  and  winter  in  Argentina.  Some  of 
the  plovers  travel  the  entire  length  of  the  American 
land  mass  every  summer,  from  Patagonia  to  the 
Arctic  Circle,  in  order  to  lay  three  or  four  pale- 
green  eggs,  and  see  them  turn  to  birdlings  by  the 
shores  of  the  Hudson  Sea.  Many  animals  have 
the  power  to  foretell  storms,  and  man,  though  he 
can  weigh  worlds,  is  ever  glad  to  profit  by  their 
superior  sense.  When  herons  fly  high  above  the 
clouds,  when  sea-birds  dip  and  sport  in  the  water 
and  the  bittern  booms  from  the  marshes,  when 
swallows  fly  low  and  the  sow  repairs  her  bed, 
when  horses  scamper  and  cattle  sniff  the  air, 
when  ravens  beat  the  air  with  their  wings,  make 
noises,  and  flock  together,  when  the  swan  raises 
her  eggs  by  additions  to  her  nest  and  the  prairie- 
dog  scratches  the  dirt  up  around  its  hole,  when 
beetles  are  not  found  in  the  air  and  caterpillars 
mass  in  their  webs,  when  bees  remain  near  their 
hives  and  ants  carry  their  eggs  to  their  innermost 
abodes,  when  frogs  croak  more  loudly  from  their 
watery  retreats  and  fishes  seek  the  safety  of  the 
unharried  deeps — look  out  for  foul  weather !  Man 
has  not  the  sweetness  of  the  song-sparrow,  the 
innocence  of  the  fawn,  nor  the  high  relative  brain 
capacity  of  the  tomtit  and  the  fice. 

Many  animals  have  powers  by  which  they  are 
able  to  act  in  concert  at  times,  vast  numbers  of 
them  moving  in  unison  over  immense  areas  by 
signals  or  intuitions  which  man  can  neither 
imitate  nor  understand.  Such  are  the  mysterious 
migrations  of  the  Norway  lemming  and  of  many 


238         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

birds  and  insects,  and  such  were  the  memorable 
stampedes  of  the  bison  hordes  on  the  American 
plains  in  years  gone  by.  Kropotkin  saw  on  the 
Siberian  steppes  one  autumn  '  thousands  and 
thousands  '  of  fallow  deer  come  together  from  an 
area  as  large  as  Great  Britain  at  a  point  on  the 
Amur  River  in  an  unprecedented  exodus  to  the 
lowlands  on  the  other  side  (20).  How  these  scat- 
tered thousands  knew  when  to  start  so  as  to  arrive 
at  the  river  at  the  same  time,  and  how  they  knew 
the  direction  to  travel  and  found  their  way  so 
well,  are  mysteries  which  man  can  as  yet  only 
wonder  at.  More  marvellous  yet — more  marvel- 
lous, perhaps,  than  the  concurrent  action  of  any 
other  animal,  for  it  implies  the  most  accurate 
time-keeping  extending  over  many  years — are  the 
annual  festivals  of  the  palolo,  an  annelid  living 
among  the  interstices  of  the  coral  reefs  of  some 
of  the  islands  of  the  South  Pacific.  About  three 
o'clock  on  the  morning  following  the  third  quarter 
of  the  October  moon,  these  worms  invariably 
appear  on  the  surface  of  the  sea,  swarming  in 
great  numbers.  Just  after  sunrise  their  bodies 
begin  to  break  to  pieces,  and  by  nine  o'clock  no 
trace  of  them  is  left.  On  the  morning  following 
the  third  quarter  of  the  November  moon  they 
appear  again,  but  usually  in  smaller  numbers.  After 
that  they  are  seen  no  more  till  the  next  October. 
This  annual  swarming  is  a  phenomenon  connected 
with  reproduction,  the  ova  escaping  from  the 
broken  bodies  of  the  females  and,  after  being 
fertilised  by  the  free-floating  sperms,  sinking 


CONCLUSION  239 

down  among  the  coral  reefs  and  hatching  into  a 
new  generation.  '  Year  after  year  these  creatures 
appear  according  to  lunar  time.  And  yet  in  the 
long-run  they  keep  solar  time.  They  keep  two 
cycles,  one  of  three  and  one  of  twenty-nine  years. 
In  the  three-year  cycle  there  are  two  intervals  oi 
twelve  lunations  and  one  of  thirteen  lunations. 
These  thirty -seven  lunations  bring  lunar  time 
somewhat  near  to  solar  time.  But  in  twenty-nine 
years  there  is  enough  difference  to  require  the 
addition  of  another  lunation;  the  twenty -ninth 
year  is  therefore  one  of  thirteen  instead  of  twelve 
lunations.  In  this  way  they  do  not  change  their 
season  in  an  entire  century.  So  unfailing  is  their 
appearance  that  in  Samoa  they  have  given  their 
name  to  the  spring  season,  which  is  called  "  the 
time  of  the  p^'Mo."  ' 

Instead  ot  le  highest,  man  is  in  some  respects 
the  lowest,  of  the  animal  kingdom.  Man  is  the 
most  unchaste,  the  most  drunken,  the  most  selfish 
and  conceited,  the  most  miserly,  the  most  hypo- 
critical, and  the  most  bloodthirsty  of  terrestrial 
creatures.  Almost  no  animals,  except  man,  kill 
for  the  mere  sake  of  killing.  For  one  being  to 
take  the  life  of  another  for  purposes  of  selfish 
utility  is  bad  enough.  But  the  indiscriminate 
massacre  of  defenceless  innocents  by  armed  and 
organised  packs,  just  for  pastime,  is  beyond  charac- 
terisation. The  human  species  is  the  only  species 
of  animals  that  plunges  to  such  depths  of  atrocity. 
Even  vipers  and  hyenas  do  not  exterminate  for 
recreation.  No  animal,  except  man,  habitually 


240         THE  PSYCHICAL  KINSHIP 

seeks  wealth  purely  out  of  an  insane  impulse  to 
accumulate.  And  no  animal,  except  man,  gloats 
over  accumulations  that  are  of  no  possible  use  to 
him,  that  are  an  injury  and  an  abomination,  and 
in  whose  acquisition  he  may  have  committed 
irreparable  crimes  upon  others.  There  are  no 
millionaires — no  professional,  legalised,  lifelong 
kleptomaniacs — among  the  birds  and  quadrupeds. 
No  animal,  except  man,  spends  so  large  a  part  of 
his  energies  striving  for  superiority — not  superiority 
in  usefulness,  but  that  superiority  which  consists 
in  simply  getting  on  the  heads  of  one's  fellows. 
And  no  animal  practises  common,  ordinary 
morality  to  the  other  beings  of  the  world  in  which 
he  lives  so  little,  compared  with  the  amount  he 
preaches  it,  as  man. 

Let  us  be  honest.  Honour  to  whom  honour 
is  due.  It  will  not  emaciate  our  own  glory  to 
recognise  the  excellence  and  reality  of  others,  or 
to  come  face  to  face  with  our  own  frailties.  We 
are  our  brother's  keeper.  Our  brethern  are  they 
that  feel.  Let  us  universalise.  Our  thoughts  and 
sympathies  have  been  too  long  wingless.  The 
Universe  is  our  Country,  and  our  Kindred  are  the 
Populations  that  Mourn.  It  is  well — it  is  eminently 
well,  for  it  is  godlike— to  send  our  Magnanimity  to 
the  Dusts  and  the  Deeps,  our  Sunrises  to  the  Utter' 
most  Isles,  and  our  Charity  to  the  Stars. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

(1)  ROMANES  :  Mental  Evolution  in  Animals  ;  New  York, 

1898. 

(2)  BURTON :   First  Footsteps  in  East  Africa ;   London, 

1856. 

(3)  LUBBOCK  :  Origin  of  Civilisation  ;  New  York,  1898. 

(4)  DEMOOR  :  Evolution  by  Atrophy  ;  New  York,  1899. 

(5)  DARWIN  :  Expression  of  Emotions  in  Men  and  Animals ; 

New  York,  1899. 

(6)  STARR  :  Human  Progress ;   Meadville,  Pennsylvania, 

1895- 

(7)  HARTMANN  :  Anthropoid  Apes ;  New  York,  1901. 

(8)  BREHM  :  From  North  Pole  to  Equator  ;  London,  1896. 

(9)  STANLEY:  In  Darkest  Africa,  vol  i. ;  New  York,  1890. 
(10)  ROMANES  :  Animal  Intelligence  ;  New  York,  1899. 
(n)  EVANS:  Evolutional  Ethics  and  Animal  Psychology; 

New  York,  1898. 

(12)  JESSE :  Gleanings  in  Natural  History,  vol.  i. ;  London, 

1832. 

(13)  PECKHAM  AND  PECKHAM  :  Instincts  and  Habits  of  the 

Solitary  Wasps  ;  Madison,  Wisconsin,  1898. 

(14)  CORNISH:  Animals  of  To-day  ;  London,  1898. 

(15)  DARWIN:  Descent  of  Man  ;  London,  1874. 

(16)  HUXLEY  :  On  the  Origin  of  Species,  lecture  iii. 

(17)  THOMPSON  :  Wild  Animals  I  have  Known  ;  New  York, 

1900. 

(18)  BREHM:  Thierleben  ;  Leipzig,  1880. 

(19)  GILBRAITH:  Ethnological  Journal,  1869,  p.  304. 

(20)  KROPOTKIN  :  Mutual  Aid  a  Factor  of  Evolution ;  New 

York,  1902. 

(21)  MORGAN  :  Animal  Behaviour  ;  London,  1900. 


241  16 


THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

PACK 

I.   HUMAN  NATURE  A  PRODUCT  OF  THE  JUNGLE-  245 

II.   EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM     -  247 

III.  THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  SAVAGE        ...  2$2 

IV.  THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  ANCIENT     -  258 
V.    MODERN   ETHICS    -----  267 

VI.  THE   ETHICS  OF  HUMAN  BEINGS  TOWARD   NON- 
HUMAN  BEINGS                 -                               -               -  272 
VII.  THE  ORIGIN   OF   PROVINCIALISM-               -               -  282 
VIII.   UNIVERSAL  ETHICS                              ...  291 
IX.   THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM                 •               •  296 
X.   ANTHROPOCENTRIC  ETHICS            -               -               -  314 
XI.   ETHICAL   IMPLICATIONS   OF  EVOLUTION                 •  319 
XII.  CONCLUSION             .....  324 


243  16— 2 


One  of  the  wisest  things  ever  said  by  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  philosophers  of  all  time  was  the  warning  to  the 
seeker  after  truth  to  beware  of  the  influence  of  the  '  idols 
(or  illusions)  of  the  tribe,'  by  which  he  meant  that  body  of 
traditional  prejudices  which  every  sect,  family,  nation,  and 
neighbourhood  has  clinging  to  it,  and  in  the  midst  of  which 
and  at  the  mercy  of  which  every  human  being  grows  up. 


*PAC-E-    v  w  i  "F  >•/ °  u 

^ I  T  )  O  A)        h 

'  A/O    <S 


THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

I.  Human  Nature  a  Product  of  the  Jungle. 

THE  Golden  Rule  is  not  exemplified  by  the 
conduct  of  any  considerable  number  of  the  in- 
habitants of  the  earth.  To  be  civilised  or  even 
half-civilised  is,  to  the  children  of  this  world, 
neither  instinctive  nor  easy.  To  preserve  a 
certain  pretence  or  appearance  of  virtue,  especially 
when  encouraged  to  do  so  by  an  uplifted  cudgel 
in  the  hands  of  the  community,  is  a  possible  and 
not  uncommon  accomplishment.  But  to  be  at 
heart  and  in  reality  as  considerate  of  others  as  we 
are  of  ourselves  is,  unfortunately,  not  natural. 
Human  beings  are  not  children  of  the  sun,  so- 
journing for  a  season  on  this  spheroid  of  clay,  and 
needing  only  pinions  to  be  angels.  Human  nature 
did  not  come,  pure  and  shining,  down  from  the 
glittering  gods.  It  came  out  of  the  jungle. 
Civilised  peoples  are  the  not  very  remote  posterity 
of  savages,  and  savages  are  the  posterity  of  indi- 
viduals who  laid  eggs  and  had  literally  cold  blood 
in  their  veins.  Civilised  men  and  women  are 
troglodytes  with  a  veneering  of  virtue.  In  the 
MS 


246  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

heart  of  every  '  civilised '  man  and  woman  is  an 
unconverted  core,  large  or  small,  of  barbarism. 
Humanity  is  only  a  habit.  Against  it,  and  tend- 
ing ever  to  weaken  and  subvert  it,  are  the  power- 
ful inertias  of  animalism.  Like  the  ship  in  Ibsen's 
'  Rhymed  Epistle,'  civilisation  carries  a  corpse  in 
its  cargo  —  the  elemental  appetites  and  passions 
which  have  been  implanted  in  all  sentient  nature 
by  the  laws  in  accordance  with  which  organic 
forms  have  been  fashioned.  Moral  progress  is 
simply  the  sloughing  off  of  this  inherited  animality. 
To  the  initiated,  therefore,  it  is  not  strange 
that  we  civilised  folk  in  our  conduct  display  so 
freely  the  phenomena  of  the  savage.  There  is 
nothing  more  inevitable  in  the  life  of  the  convert 
than  the  haunting  inclination  to  give  way  to 
original  impulses.  It  is  not  strange  that  we  are 
powerless  to  be  as  good  and  beautiful  and  true  as 
we  would  like  to  be,  that  our  divine  efforts  are  our 
half-hearted  efforts,  and  that  the  only  time  we  get 
terribly  in  earnest  and  put  forth  really  titanic 
energies  is  when  we  are  dominated  directly  or 
indirectly  by  the  instincts  of  the  pack.  Human 
aspiration  is  fettered  by  the  fearful  facts  of  human 
origin.  It  is  not  strange  that  we  are  continually 
conscious  of  being  torn  by  contending  tendencies, 
conscious  of  ghastly  masteries,  and  of  horrible 
goings  on  in  our  innermost  beings.  The  human 
heart  is  the  gladiatorial  meeting-place  of  gods  and 
beasts. 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  247 

II.  Egoism  and  Altruism. 

Everything  has  been  evolved — everything — from 
daffodils  to  states  and  from  ticks  to  religion. 
Every  organic  thing  is  the  result  of  long  and 
incessant  survival  of  the  advantageous — advanta- 
geous from  the  standpoint  of  the  organism  itself 
or  from  the  standpoint  of  its  kind,  not  necessarily 
so  from  the  standpoint  of  the  universe.  That 
which  is  true  of  everything  is  true  also  of  egoism 
and  altruism.  Egoism  and  altruism  exist  as  facts 
in  the  natures  of  human  and  other  beings  for  the 
same  reason  that  the  various  physical  facts  exist 
in  the  structures  of  human  and  other  beings, 
because  they  have  been  advantageous  in  the 
struggle  for  life.  There  is  just  as  definite  an 
explanation  for  the  existence  of  egoism  and 
altruism  in  this  world,  and  for  their  existence  in 
the  particular  form  and  ratio  in  which  they  do 
exist,  as  there  is  for  the  fact  that  the  human  hand 
has  five  fingers,  the  rose  odour,  and  the  eggs  of  the 
kildeer  the  mottled  markings  of  the  clods  among 
which  they  lie. 

Egoism  is  preference  for  self,  partiality  toward 
that  part  of  the  universe  bounded  by  one's  own 
skin.  It  may  consist  simply  of  regard  for  self, 
but  with  regard  for  self  is  usually  associated 
enmity  toward  others.  Egoism  manifests  itself 
in  such  qualities  of  mind  as  selfishness,  cruelty, 
intolerance,  hate,  hardheartedness,  savagery,  rude- 
ness, injustice,  narrowness,  and  the  like.  It  is  the 
primal  impulse  of  the  living  heart.  Enmity  is 


248  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

older  and  more  universal  than  love.  Enmity  con- 
stituted the  very  loins  from  which  long  ago  came 
the  original  miscreants  of  this  world. 

'  I  saw  the  fishes  playing  there ; 
I  saw  all  that  was  in  the  whole  world  round ; 
In  wood,  and  bower,  and  marsh,  and  mead,  and  field, 
All  things  which  creep  and  fly, 
And  put  a  foot  to  earth. 
All  these  I  saw,  and  say  to  you, 
That  nothing  lives  among  them  without  hate.' 

Life  has  been  developed  through  selection.  This 
selection  has  been  brought  about  largely  through 
war — war  between  individuals  and  between  groups 
of  individuals.  War  and  competition  are  struggle 
between  living  beings,  and  the  soul  of  competition 
is  selfishness.  Egoism  is  the  primal  and  most 
powerful  of  terrestrial  impulses,  because  beings 
hated  and  exterminated  each  other  before  they 
tolerated  and  loved,  and  because  struggle  has 
far  overshadowed  cooperation  as  a  factor  in  life 
evolution. 

There  are  those  who  believe  that  mutual  aid 
has  been  a  more  dynamic  factor  in  the  develop- 
ment of  terrestrial  life  than  competition.  Co- 
operation has  been  an  important  element  in  the 
evolution  of  animal  life,  and  it  has  operated 
among  nearly  all  animals,  from  the  humblest  to 
the  highest.  Far  down  near  the  beginning  of 
organic  existence  we  find  the  one-celled  forms 
huddling  together  in  colonies,  giving  rise  in  the 
course  of  time  to  the  many-celled  animals.  But 
to  conclude  that  cooperation  is  the  chief  factor  in 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM          249 

animal  development  is  to  shut  one's  eyes  to  one  of 
the  most  obvious  and  overwhelming  facts  of  organic 
evolution.  Individualism  antedates  mutualism, 
both  among  the  one-celled  forms  and  among  the 
many-celled  metazoa.  Cooperation  everywhere  is 
the  sequence  of  a  long  preliminary  of  individual 
contention.  And  cooperation  does  not  mean 
cessation  of  struggle,  either  among  those  co- 
operating or  among  the  groups  themselves,  as 
Kropotkin  and  other  exaggerators  of  the  mutual 
aid  factor  seem  to  assume.  It  usually  does  little 
more  than  transfer  the  struggle  from  individuals 
to  groups.  When  a  lot  of  pelicans  or  wolves  get 
together  and  work  together  in  order  that  they  may 
thereby  the  better  defend  themselves  or  slay  others, 
it  is  hard  to  see  how  such  facts  can  be  placed  to 
the  credit  of  cooperation  any  more  than  to  that 
of  competition.  Then,  too,  excepting  in  a  few 
societies  of  insects,  cooperation  has  not  gone  so 
far  as  to  do  more  than  slightly  alleviate  the 
competition  even  among  the  members  of  a  co- 
operating group.  Competition  is  a  much  more 
common  and  influential  fact  in  the  phenomena  of 
life  than  cooperation,  for  it  involves  a  large  part 
of  the  activity  of  individual  life,  and  is  also  promi- 
nent in  all  social  activities. 

The  preponderance  of  egoism  in  the  natures  of 
living  beings  is  the  most  mournful  and  immense 
fact  in  the  phenomena  of  conscious  life.  It  has 
made  the  world  the  kind  of  world  it  would  have 
been  had  the  gods  actually  emptied  their  wrath 
vials  upon  it.  Brotherhood  is  anomalous,  and, 


250          THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

even  in  its  highest  manifestations,  is  but  the 
expression  of  a  veiled  and  calculating  egoism. 
Inhumanity  is  everywhere.  The  whole  planet  is 
steeped  in  it.  Every  creature  faces  an  inhospi- 
table universeful,  and  every  life  is  a  campaign.  It 
has  all  come  about  as  a  result  of  the  mindless  and 
inhuman  manner  in  which  life  has  been  developed 
on  the  earth.  It  has  been  said  that  an  individual 
of  unlimited  faculties  and  infinite  goodness  and 
power  made  this  world  and  endowed  it  with  ways 
of  acting,  and  that  this  individual,  as  the  world's 
executive,  continues  to  determine  its  phenomena 
by  inspiring  the  order  of  its  events.  But  one 
cannot  help  thinking  sometimes,  when,  in  his 
more  daring  and  vivid  moments,  he  comes  to 
comprehend  the  real  character  and  condition  of 
the  world,  what  a  discrepancy  exists  between  the 
reputation  of  this  builder  and  his  works,  and 
cannot  help  wondering  whether  an  ordinary 
human  being  with  only  common-sense  and  insight 
and  an  average  concern  for  the  welfare  of  the 
world  would  not  make  a  great  improvement  in 
terrestrial  affairs  if  he  only  had  the  opportunity 
for  a  while. 

Altruism  is  the  recognition  of,  and  regard  for, 
others.  It  shows  itself  in  feelings  of  justice,  good- 
will, tenderness,  charity,  pity,  public  spirit,  sym- 
pathy, fraternity  and  love,  and  in  acts  of  kindness, 
humanity,  mercy,  generosity,  politeness,  philan- 
thropy and  the  like.  Altruism  is  a  graft.  The 
stock  is  selfishness  and  brutality.  Altruism  (the 
form  of  altruism  to  which  I  here  refer :  there  are 


EGOISM  AND  ALTRUISM  251 

several  distinct  species  of  altruism)  has  come  into 
the  world  as  a  result  of  cooperation  and  con- 
sanguinity. It  has  grown  out  of  the  cooperation 
of  individuals  in  families  and  tribes  against  their 
cooperating  enemies.  Altruism — at  least,  in  its 
initial  stages — is  a  sort  of  tribal  egoism.  Men  and 
other  animals  have  learned  to  stand  by  each  other 
and  help  each  other  against  their  common  foes 
because  it  was  the  only  way  in  which  they  were 
able  to  stand.  Those  aggregates  that  have  had 
strongest  this  feeling  of  fraternity  have  prospered 
and  prevailed,  while  the  less  fraternal  have  gone 
down. 

The  altruism  manifested  by  men  in  their  rela- 
tions with  each  other  is  not  different  in  kind  from 
the  altruism  and  cooperation  displayed  by  other 
social  animals.  H  uman  gregariousness — the  gather- 
ing together  of  human  beings  into  tribes  and 
communities  for  purposes  of  companionship  and 
defence — is  a  part  of  the  phenomena  of  animal 
gregariousness  in  general.  The  inhabitants  of  a 
human  town,  however  much  they  may  think  so,  are 
not  impelled  to  associate  with  each  other  and  to 
cooperate  with  each  other  in  the  affairs  of  life  by 
causes  or  considerations  different  from  those  which 
actuate  a  society  of  ants  or  apes,  of  wasps  or 
wolves,  who  do  the  same  things.  The  ante- 
cedents of  human  ethics  and  society  are,  there- 
fore, to  be  looked  for  in  the  ant-hill  and  the 
jungle. 

The  fact  that  altruism  has  been  evolved  by  the 
cooperation  of  individuals  with  each  other  and 


252  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

against  others  is  a  significant  fact  in  the  analysis 
and  understanding  of  the  ethical  phenomena  of 
the  earth.  To  this  fact  is  due  the  restricted  and 
illogical  character  of  all  altruism.  The  ethical 
systems  of  all  peoples  are,  and  have  always  been, 
to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  provincial  and  contra, 
dictory.  Ethical  feeling  and  practice  are  not 
extended  universally — that  is,  to  all  beings — but 
are  maintained  only  among  those  associating 
more  or  less  closely  as  a  group,  and  having 
interests  that  are  more  or  less  nearly  the  same. 
Among  men  of  primitive  mind,  morality  is  a  thing 
to  be  practised  toward  only  a  few  thousand  or 
even  a  few  hundred  individuals,  and  then  in  a 
very  half-awake  and  half-hearted  manner.  But 
as  the  perceptions  sharpen  and  vivify  and  the 
horizon  of  knowledge  widens — as  commerce  and 
imagination  cause  the  mind  to  overflow  the  narrow 
bounds  of  the  community  into  larger  dimensions 
of  time  and  space — as  the  myriad  influences 
operating  as  race  experience  and  race  selection 
enable  men  to  realise  the  wider  and  wider  oneness 
of  their  origin,  natures,  interests,  and  destiny — 
an  increasing  consistency  characterises  the  con- 
duct among  the  members  of  the  group,  and  an 
increasingly  larger  number  of  individuals  are 
admitted  to  ethical  consideration  and  kinship. 

III.  The  Ethics  of  the  Savage. 

The  ethics  of  the  savage  is,  almost  without 
exception,  purely  tribal  in  its  extent.  A  marked 
distinction  is  everywhere  made  by  primitive  peoples 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  SAVAGE    253 

between  injuries  to  persons  inside  the  tribe  and 
injuries  to  tkose  outside  the  tribe.  Crimes  which 
are  looked  upon  as  felonious  when  committed  by 
a  savage  against  the  members  of  his  own  tribe 
may  be  regarded  as  harmless,  or  even  highly  com- 
mendable, when  perpetrated  on  those  outside  the 
tribe.  Acts  are  not  judged  according  to  their 
intrinsic  natures  or  results,  but  wholly  as  to 
whether  they  are  performed  on  outsiders  or  on 
insiders.  The  Balantis  (Africa)  punish  with  death 
a  theft  committed  against  a  fellow-tribesman,  but 
encourage  and  reward  thieving  from  other  tribes. 
The  Afridi  (Afghanistan)  mother  prays  that  her 
son  may  be  a  successful  robber — not  a  robber  of 
her  own  people,  but  of  other  peoples — and  in 
order  that  he  may  become  proficient  in  crime 
teaches  him  to  creep  stealthily  through  a  hole  in 
the  wall.  By  certain  Bedouin  tribes  the  '  strenu- 
ous life '  is  held  in  such  high  honour  that  '  it  is 
considered  a  disgrace  to  die  in  bed ' ;  and  among 
the  man-eating  Fijians  '  men  who  have  not  slain 
an  enemy  suffer  the  most  degrading  of  all  punish- 
ments '  (i).  In  the  paradise  of  the  Kukis  (India) 
the  cut-throats  who  have  in  life  killed  the  largest 
number  of  aliens  not  only  inherit  the  highest 
places,  but  these  adepts  of  the  knife  are  supposed 
to  be  attended  in  their  celestial  comings  and 
goings  by  their  victims  as  slaves  (i).  In  his 
dealings  with  the  other  members  of  his  tribe,  the . 
savage  observes  a  certain  rude  code  of  morals, 
this  code  being  usually,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
civilised  code,  an  inglorious  mixture  of  equity  and 


254  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

brutality,  superstition  and  sanity,  honesty  and 
hypocrisy.  But  the  savage  recognises  no  moral 
obligations  to  any  being  outside  of  his  tribe, 
clan,  or  family.  Anthropology  teaches  nothing 
more  positively  than  this.  Consanguinity  and 
self-interest  are  the  only  bases  of  savage  friend- 
ship. Outsiders  are  outlaws.  They  may  be 
attacked,  robbed,  deceived,  murdered,  eaten,  or 
enslaved,  with  perfect  propriety.  It  was  this 
general  hostility  of  foreigners  that  Cain  feared 
when  he  was  turned  out  from  his  countrymen 
after  his  crime  upon  Abel.  He  knew  that  he  was 
liable  to  be  set  upon  by  the  first  stranger  that 
came  upon  him.  So  the  Lord  is  said  to  have  set 
a  mark  upon  him,  'lest  any  finding  him  should 
kill  him.' 

'  There  was  no  brotherhood  recognised  by  our 
savage  forefathers,'  says  Sir  Henry  Maine,  in 
speaking  of  the  ancestors  of  the  Aryan  and 
Semitic  races,  'except  actual  consanguinity  re- 
garded as  a  fact.  If  a  man  was  not  of  kin  to 
another,  there  was  nothing  between  them.  He 
was  an  enemy  to  be  hated,  slain,  or  despoiled  as 
much  as  the  wild  beasts  upon  which  the  tribe 
made  war,  as  belonging,  indeed,  to  the  craftiest 
and  cruelest  of  wild  animals.  It  would  scarcely 
be  too  strong  to  assert  that  the  dogs  which 
followed  the  camp  had  more  in  common  with  it 
than  the  tribesmen  of  an  alien  and  unrelated  tribe ' 
(2).  Among  some  tribes  of  savage  men  the  ethical 
code  is  reversed  in  dealing  with  outsiders,  and 
enmity  toward  aliens  is  considered  a  duty. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  SAVAGE    255 

This  same  senseless  hostility  toward  every  one 
from  abroad,  so  spitefully  exhibited  by  primitive 
men,  is  also  manifested  by  ants,  who  immediately 
recognise  and  pounce  upon  an  individual  intro- 
duced from  a  foreign  colony,  but  welcome  with 
every  demonstration  of  joy,  even  after  a  lapse  of 
weeks  or  months,  a  returning  member  of  their 
own  society.  The  same  spirit  of  exclusiveness 
is  found  also  in  elephants.  If  by  accident  an 
elephant  becomes  separated  from  his  herd,  he 
becomes  an  outcast  and  a  fugitive,  never  being 
permitted  in  any  circumstances  to  attach  himself 
to  another  herd  (3). 

That  the  savage  should  entertain  feelings  of 
friendship  for  those  belonging  to  the  same  social 
unit  as  himself  is,  considering  the  circumstances 
in  which  it  takes  place,  a  perfectly  natural  phe- 
nomenon. The  members  of  his  tribe  are,  to  the 
savage,  the  beings  among  whom  he  has  come 
into  existence,  and  in  the  midst  of  whom  he  has 
grown  up.  He  knows  and  understands  them, 
and  is  known  and  understood  by  them.  They 
speak  the  same  language  as  himself,  and  cherish 
the  same  customs  and  traditions.  They  have 
the  same  sacred  trees,  the  same  gods,  the  same 
experiences  day  after  day,  and  the  same  memories, 
as  he  himself.  They  are  his  associates  in  the 
chase,  his  allies  in  war,  and  his  comrades  in 
sorrow  and  success.  They  are  the  only  beings 
into  whose  lives  he  has  ever  entered.  They 
constitute  his  world,  and  are  to  him  the  only 
real  beings  in  the  universe. 


256  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

The  members  of  his  tribe  are,  moreover,  to  the 
savage,  for  the  most  part,  his  kinspeople.  If 
they  are  not  actually  related  to  him  by  blood, 
they  are  usually  conceived  by  him  to  be  so  related. 
The  co-villagers  of  an  Indian  community  call 
each  other  brothers.  It  is  a  characteristic  of  all 
the  Aryan  and  Semitic  races  when  in  the  tribal 
state  to  conceive  that  the  tribes  themselves,  and 
all  subdivisions  of  them,  are  descended  each  from 
a  single  male  ancestor.  The  savage  sees  the 
living  family  of  which  he  forms  a  part  descended 
from  a  single  living  man  and  his  wife  or  wives. 
This  family  group  with  which  he  is  familiar  and 
other  similar  groups  make  up  the  tribe.  And  the 
process  by  which  each  family  has  been  brought 
about  is  in  his  mind  identical  with  the  process 
by  which  the  community  as  a  whole  has  been 
formed  (2).  It  is  a  conception  of  this  kind, 
handed  down  as  a  tradition  from  ancient  tribal 
times,  which  causes  the  Jews  even  to-day  to  regard 
themselves  as  the  '  seed '  of  that  venerable  sheik 
who,  so  many  centuries  ago,  led  them  as  a  band 
of  nomads  in  their  memorable  migration  westward 
from  the  plains  of  Mesopotamia.  It  is  not  strange, 
therefore,  considering  all  of  the  circumstances  in 
the  midst  of  which  the  savage  lives  and  moves, 
that  he  should  look  upon  his  fellow-tribesmen  as 
beings  to  be  distinguished  by  him  from  all  other 
beings  in  the  universe. 

Nor  is  it  strange,  when  we  consider  the  mental 
sterility  of  the  savage,  his  lack  of  travel  and 
imagination,  the  meagerness  of  his  experiences, 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  SAVAGE    257 

and  his  utter  ignorance  of  the  world  beyond  the 
community  in  which  he  lives,  that  he  should  look 
upon  and  treat  all  outsiders  as  nobodies — as  beings 
without  any  claims  whatever  upon  his  humanity 
or  mercy.  The  imagination  is  the  picturing  power 
of  the  mind,  the  power  by  which  beings  are  able 
to  get  out  of  themselves  and  into  the  places  of 
others,  the  power  which  enables  us  to  view  the 
world  comparatively — that  is,  from  different  points 
of  view.  This  power  of  mind,  which  imparts  to 
the  higher  types  of  intelligence  their  mobility  and 
sympathy,  is  rudimentary  in  the  savage.  This 
has  been  proved  by  Tylor  in  his  study  of  the 
comparative  mythology  of  savages.  It  is  this 
lack  of  imagination  in  the  savage,  combined  with 
his  ignorance  and  his  simplicity  of  life,  which 
gives  to  him  his  ferocity,  and  which  renders  him 
inaccessible  to  those  higher  sentiments  of  justice 
and  righteousness  which  are — well,  which  are,  at 
least,  dreamed  about  and  theorised  about  by  the 
more  evolved  savages  of  the  'civilised  world.' 
The  world,  to  the  simple  mind  of  the  savage,  is,  as 
it  is  to  the  mind  of  the  child,  the  world  in  which 
he  lives  and  moves — the  world  which  he  feels, 
hears,  tastes,  and  sees.  The  horizon  is  the  boun- 
dary of  the  universe.  Beings  beyond  his  tribe  are 
outside  of  the  world.  If  they  exist  at  all,  it  is  as 
a  very  different  order  of  beings  from  him  and  his 
people.  They  are  not  of  kin  to  him,  speak  a 
strange  tongue,  and  have  monstrous  customs  and 
superstitions.  How  could  they  be  in  any  way 
related  to  him?  They  are  his  enemies — vague 

17 


258  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

villainous  apparitions  who  appear  to  him  only  in 
the  horrible  ordeals  of  battle.  His  chief  occupa- 
tion is  the  waging  of  war  against  them,  and  his 
keenest  gratification  is  felt  in  laying  them  low. 
The  accounts  of  all  travellers  testify  that  the 
intertribal  relations  of  savages  are,  with  few 
exceptions,  those  of  chronic  feud  and  hostility. 
The  irreconcilable  antagonism  between  the  savage 
and  those  around  him  begets  in  the  savage  nature 
its  dominating  impulse — hate,  hatred  and  hostility 
toward  other  men,  as  well  as  toward  all  other 
beings.  In  fact,  the  savage  makes  no  moral 
distinction  between  man  and  the  other  animals, 
but  regards  them  all  indiscriminately  as  his  foes, 
whom  he  must  either  use  or  remove  from  the  face 
of  the  earth.  The  savage  hunts  men  about  as  he 
hunts  other  animals,  and  for  a  like  purpose.  The 
Troglodytes  hunted  the  Ethiopians  in  four-horse 
chariots  with  as  little  compunction  as  Americans 
hunt  antelopes  to-day. 

IV.  The  Ethics  of  the  Ancient, 

But  the  doctrine  that  each  petty  tribe  is  the 
centre  of  the  world  and  the  only  real  and  impor- 
tant people  in  the  universe,  and  that  all  others 
are  mere  nobodies,  is  not  peculiar  to  primitive 
peoples.  Ethnocentric  ethics — the  ethics  of  amity 
toward  their  own  tribe  or  state,  their  own  clique 
or  kind,  and  the  ethics  of  enmity  toward  outsiders — 
has  been  manifested  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  by 
the  peoples  of  all  times  and  of  all  degrees  of 
enlightenment.  Every  people  that  has  ever  existed 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  ANCIENT    259 

has  had  its  own  particular  point  of  view,  its  own 
bias,  its  own  knot-hole,  large  or  small,  through 
which  it  has  looked  at  life  and  the  world.  This  is 
inevitable.  It  arises  as  a  necessary  sequence  out 
of  the  fact  that  all  peoples  above  savages  are 
the  descendants  of  savages,  and  as  such  have 
inherited  the  limitations,  mental  and  environ- 
mental, of  those  from  whom  they  have  evolved. 

Aliens  had  no  legal  rights  in  ancient  times — 
none  whatever.  International  cooperation,  such 
as  exists  among  the  political  societies  of  Europe 
and  America  to-day,  was  absolutely  unknown. 
International  relations  were  everywhere  those  of 
hostility.  States  and  races  looked  upon  each 
other  as  foes,  as  objects  of  plunder  and  victim- 
isation, not  as  friends. 

Caesar  says  of  the  ancient  Germans  that 
depredations  committed  beyond  the  boundaries 
of  each  state  bore  no  infamy,  and  that  stealing 
from  aliens  was  even  encouraged  as  a  means  of 
teaching  their  young  men  adroitness. 

The  ancient  Jews  are  an  excellent  illustration 
of  a  narrow  and  self-centred  people.  Not- 
withstanding their  insignificance,  politically  and 
intellectually,  as  compared  with  the  Egyptians, 
Greeks,  and  Persians,  the  Jews  believed  them- 
selves to  be  the  only  people  of  the  first  class 
inhabiting  the  earth.  They  conceived  that  they 
had  been  selected  as  favourites  by  the  gods 
themselves,  and  that  around  their  little  district 
in  half-arid  Palestine  revolved  the  interests  of  the 
entire  world.  Their  chief  city  was  supposed  to 

17—2 


260  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

be  the  sacred  and  central  cit}  of  the  world,  and 
heaven  itself  only  a  new  and  idealised  edition  of 
their  metropolis.  Every  Jev  was  bound  to  every 
other  Jew  by  high-wrought  ceremony  and  obliga- 
tion. But  all  non-Jews  were  '  Gentiles,'  chaff-like 
'pagans,'  who  possessed  no  rights  which  a  'child 
of  Abraham  '  was  bound  to  respect.  Their  tribal 
god  is  said  to  have  been  so  indulgent  toward  them 
as  his  '  chosen  people  '  that  he  allowed  them  to 
exact  usury  from  foreigners,  to  sell  them  diseased 
meats,  and  to  borrow  jewels  from  them  and  after- 
wards run  away  with  them.  He  even  permitted 
them  to  make  war  upon  weak  peoples  and  dis- 
possess them  of  their  lands.  '  Whomsoever  the 
Lord  our  God  shall  drive  out  from  before  us, 
them  will  we  possess*  (Judg.  xi.  24). 

The  kings  of  the  ancient  Assyrians  were  so 
accustomed  to  cruelties  upon  non-Assyrians,  and 
were  so  proud  of  these  cruelties,  that  they  recorded 
them  in  stone  as  a  claim  to  immortality  among 
men.  Assurbanipal,  in  speaking  of  the  conquered, 
says :  '  I  pulled  out  their  tongues  and  cut  ofLtheir 
limbs,  and  caused  them  to  be  eaten  by  dogs,  bears, 
eagles,  vultures,  birds  of  heaven.'  Assur-natsir-pal, 
another  wonderful  fellow,  boasts  similarly :  '  I 
flayed  the  nobles  and  covered  the  pyramid  with 
their  skins,  and  their  young  men  and  maidens  I 
burned  as  a  holocaust.'  '  Their  carcasses  covered 
the  valleys  and  the  tops  of  the  mountains,'  says 
Tiglath-Pileser  in  his  account  of  the  slain  Mus- 
kayans ;  and  Sennacherib  informs  us  proudly  that 
he  drove  his  chariot  over  the  dead  bodies  of  his 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  ANCIENT    261 

victims  until  '  its  wheels  were  clogged  with  flesh 
and  blood.'  '  Evidently,'  remarks  Spencer,  in 
speaking  of  these  monstrous  inscriptions,  '  the 
expectation  was  that  men  of  after-times  would 
admire  these  merciless  destructions ;  for  we  cannot 
assume  that  these  Assyrian  kings  intentionally 
made  themselves  eternally  infamous '  (i). 

To  the  ancient  Greeks  there  were  two  classes  of 
human  beings  in  the  world :  Greeks  and  '  barbar- 
ians.' The  Greeks  were  the  inhabitants  of  Hellas, 
which  was  believed  to  be  the  central  region  of 
the  world,  and  the  '  barbarians  '  were  the  godless 
denizens  of  the  less-favoured  and  less  centrally 
located  remainder  of  the  earth.  The  world  was 
believed  to  be  flat  or  shield-shaped,  and  in  its 
exact  centre  stood  Mount  Olympus  in  northern 
Thessaly.  This  mountain,  which  is  9,700  feet 
high,  was  supposed  to  be  the  highest  elevation  on 
the  earth,  and  was  the  awful  abode  of  the  gods. 
The  Greeks  called  themselves  Hellenes.  According 
to  their  fabled  genealogy,  they  were  the  descend- 
ants of  Hellen,  son  of  Deucalion,  the  Greek  Noah. 
While  they  were  often  at  war  with  each  other, 
they  spoke  a  common  language,  and  always 
regarded  themselves  as  members  of  a  single 
family.  All  non-Greeks  were  '  barbarians,'  in- 
cluding the  Romans,  who  were  called  'barbarians' 
down  to  the  time  of  Augustus.  While  the  Greeks 
themselves  traced  their  ancestry  back  to  the  bright 
blood  of  the  gods,  the  '  barbarians '  were  generally 
supposed  to  have  originated  from  stones  and  trees. 
The  '  barbarians '  were  looked  upon  and  treated 


262  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

by  the  Greeks  everywhere  as  a  different  order  of 
beings  from  themselves.  Those  taken  by  them  in 
war  were  regularly  reduced  to  slavery.  The  slave 
population  created  in  this  way  was  increased  by 
the  slave  traffic  carried  on  with  the  East  until  the 
slave  population  of  Greece  was  several  times  as 
great  as  the  free  population.  The  whole  Hellenic 
world,  in  fact,  even  in  the  days  of  its  greatest 
magnificence,  was  one  vast  pen  of  slaves.  Almost 
every  freeman  of  Attica  was  a  slave-owner.  Out 
of  a  population  of  about  five  hundred  thousand, 
four  hundred  thousand  were  slaves.  It  was  con- 
sidered a  real  hardship  by  the  Greeks  to  be  com- 
pelled to  get  along  with  less  than  a  half-dozen 
slaves.  In  Corinth  and  JEgina.  there  were  ten 
slaves  to  one  freeman.  In  Sparta  the  slaves  were 
the  vanquished  Helots,  the  original  inhabitants 
of  the  Peloponnesus,  whom  the  Spartans  had 
conquered  and  reduced  to  chains  in  early  times. 
Their  lot  was  particularly  horrible.  They  were 
the  property  of  the  state,  and  were  distributed  to 
the  Spartan  lords  by  lot.  '  They  practically  had 
no  rights  which  their  masters  felt  bound  to  re- 
spect. If  one  of  their  number  displayed  unusual 
powers  of  either  body  or  mind,  he  was  secretly 
assassinated,  as  it  was  deemed  unsafe  to  allow 
such  qualities  to  be  fostered  in  the  servile  class. 
It  is  affirmed  [by  Thucydides]  that,  when  the  Helots 
grew  too  numerous  for  the  supposed  safety  of  the 
state,  their  numbers  were  thinned  by  deliberate 
massacre  of  the  surplus  population'  (4).  The 
conception  of  human  slavery  entertained  by  the 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  ANCIENT    263 

common  mass  of  Greeks  may  be  inferred  from  the 
fact  that  philosophers  like  Aristotle  taught  that 
'slaves  were  simply  domestic  animals  possessed 
of  intelligence.'  It  is  this  fact,  this  utter  lack  oi 
justice  and  humanity  manifested  by  the  Greeks  in 
their  treatment  of  non- Hellenic  mankind,  which 
gives  to  Greek  'civilisation'  its  seamy  side.  Greek 
society  has  been  appropriately  likened  to  a  pyra- 
mid, its  apex  gleaming  with  light  and  splendour, 
while  its  base  was  sunk  in  darkness. 

Non-Romans  were  called  'barbarians'  also  by 
the  Romans,  and  were  considered  by  the  Romans 
to  be  an  entirely  different  order  of  beings  from 
themselves.  Any  splinter  of  a  Roman  was, 
according  to  the  Romans,  superior  to  the  most 
illustrious  'barbarian.'  Men  were  not  treated 
nor  estimated  according  to  their  intrinsic  quali- 
ties, but  wholly  as  to  whether  they  were  or  were 
not  '  Roman  citizens.'  To  be  a  '  Roman  citizen  ' 
was  to  be  entitled  to  everything;  to  be  a '  barbarian' 
was  not  to  be  entitled  to  anything  necessarily, 
except  to  serve  in  some  way  the  all-glorious 
Romans.  The  elaborate  legal  and  ethical  codes 
formulated  by  these  masters  of  the  Mediterranean 
were  reserved  religiously  for  themselves.  The 
business  of  the  '  barbarians  '  was  to  furnish  fields 
for  pillage  and  conquest,  to  impart  magnitude  to 
triumphal  pageants,  to  act  as  slaves,  and  to  die 
by  ignominiously  butchering  each  other  for  the 
amusement  of  their  bloodthirsty  masters.  '  Bar- 
barian '  lands  were  looked  upon  simply  as  game- 
preserves  where  ambitious  captains  from  the  Tiber 


264  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

went  to  refresh  their  reputations  by  hunting  and 
victimising  the  inhabitants.  The  history  of  Rome 
is  the  history  of  infamy  on  a  colossal,  almost 
world-wide,  scale.  There  has  never  been  dis- 
played by  any  people  pretending  to  be  civilised 
such  shameless  savagery  as  that  displayed  by  the 
Romans  in  their  gladiatorial  arenas,  where  men 
(generally  the  captives  of  war)  were  '  butchered  to 
make  a  Roman  holiday.'  These  tragedies,  in  their 
magnitude  and  atrocity,  seem  almost  frightful 
when  we  read  of  them  on  the  pages  of  history. 
They  were  generally  celebrated  by  victorious  cap- 
tains and  emperors  at  the  close  of  some  unusual 
outrage  against  the  '  barbarians,'  or  upon  the 
departure  of  Roman  legions  for  the  field  of  activity. 
The  celebrations  sometimes  lasted  weeks,  or  even 
months.  The  Emperor  Trajan  celebrated  his 
victories  over  the  Dacians  with  shows  that  lasted 
more  than  a  hundred  days.  During  this  horrible 
festival  ten  thousand  men  fought  upon  the  arena, 
and  more  than  ten  thousand  wild  animals  were 
slain.  The  gladiators  in  these  ancient  combats 
fought  in  chariots,  on  horseback,  on  foot — in  all 
the  ways  in  which  soldiers  fought  in  actual  battle. 
They  fought  with  swords,  lances,  daggers,  tridents, 
and  every  other  manner  of  weapon.  Some  had 
nets  and  lassoes  with  which  they  entangled  their 
adversaries,  and  then  slew  them.  The  life  of  a 
wounded  gladiator  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
spectators,  who  showed  their  clemency  or  their 
lack  of  it  by  turning  their  thumbs  respectively 
down  or  up.  The  thirst  of  the  populace  for  blood 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  ANCIENT    265 

was  sometimes  such  that  the  dying  were  aroused 
and  forced  on  to  the  fight  by  burning  with  a 
hot  iron.  The  dead  bodies  were  dragged  from 
the  arena  with  hooks,  like  the  carcasses  of 
animals,  and  the  pools  of  blood  soaked  up  with 
dry  sand  (5).  There  was  an  occasional  Roman, 
like  Seneca,  sane  enough  to  realise  the  real  char- 
acter of  these  performances,  and  brave  enough 
to  denounce  them  as  crimes.  But  by  the  great 
mass  of  all  classes  of  Romans,  even  by  those  who 
pretended  to  think,  they  were  regarded  with  per- 
fect moral  indifference.  The  excuse  offered  by 
Pliny  was  generally  concurred  in  by  his  country- 
men, that  these  bloody  shows  were  necessary  for 
the  cultivation  of  manliness  and  for  keeping 
awake  the  strenuous  and  red-handed  instincts  in 
the  young. 

Scarce  less  revolting  than  the  gladiatorial  arena, 
in  its  violation  of  every  principle  of  humanity, 
was  the  institution  of  human  slavery.  During  the 
later  republic  and  the  earlier  empire,  one -half 
the  population  of  the  Roman  state  was  slaves. 
The  slave  population  was  recruited  chiefly,  as  in 
Greece,  by  war  and  by  slave-hunting.  Slave- 
traders  and  slave-markets  flourished  both  in  the 
capital  itself  and  in  all  the  great  ports  visited  by 
Roman  ships.  Some  of  the  outlying  provinces  of 
Asia  and  Africa  were  almost  depopulated  by  the 
slave-hunters.  Greek  slaves  were  the  highest- 
priced,  because  the  most  intelligent.  Among  the 
wealthy,  who,  like  the  illiterate  rich  of  every  age, 
dawdled  their  time  in  ostentation,  there  were 


266  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

slaves  for  each  different  function  in  the  house- 
hold. There  were  the  cubicularii,  who  acted  as 
housemaids;  the  triclinarii,  who  waited  at  table; 
the  culinarii,  who  acted  as  kitchen  drudges  ;  and 
the  balnearii,  who  looked  after  the  baths.  Then 
there  were  tonsores,  or  barbers ;  criniflores,  or  hair- 
crimpers  ;  calceatores,  who  took  care  of  the  feet ; 
and  lector es,  whose  business  it  was  to  read  aloud 
to  their  masters  at  meals,  in  the  bath,  or  in  bed. 
The  ostiarius,  who  was  sometimes  chained  in  the 
vestibule  like  a  dog,  was  the  porter ;  the  invitator 
summoned  the  guests;  and  the  servus  ab  hospitiis 
looked  after  their  lodgment.  There  was  the  slave 
called  the  sandalio,  whose  sole  duty  was  to  care  for 
his  master's  sandals;  and  another,  called  the  nomen- 
clator,  whose  exclusive  business  it  was  to  accom- 
pany his  master  when  he  went  upon  the  street, 
and  give  him  the  names  of  such  persons  as  he 
ought  to  recognise.  The  common  punishment 
for  a  refractory  slave  was  beating.  If  the  runaway 
were  caught,  as  he  could  hardly  fail  to  be,  since 
there  were  extremely  heavy  penalties  for  harbour- 
ing or  assisting  him,  he  was  either  branded  or  had 
an  iron  collar  like  a  dog's  welded  around  his  neck, 
or  his  legs  were  fettered,  or,  in  exaggerated  or 
repeated  cases  of  offence,  he  was  at  once  turned 
into  the  arena  or  otherwise  put  to  death.  If  he 
attempted  to  take  personal  vengeance  upon  his 
master  for  any  wrong  whatsoever,  his  whole  family 
shared  his  fate,  and  the  regular  form  of  capital 
punishment  for  a  slave  was  crucifixion  under  the 
most  ignominious  and  agonising  circumstances  (6). 


THE  ETHICS  OF  THE  ANCIENT    267 

'  In  many  cases,  as  a  measure  of  precaution,  the 
slaves  were  forced  to  work  in  chains  and  to  sleep 
in  subterranean  prisons.  The  feeling  entertained 
toward  this  unfortunate  class  in  the  later  repub- 
lican period  is  illustrated  by  Varro's  classification 
of  slaves  as  "  vocal  agricultural  implements,"  and 
by  Cato  the  Elder's  recommendation  that  old  and 
worn-out  slaves  be  sold,  as  a  matter  of  economy. 
Sick  ^rri  hopelessly  infirm  slaves  were  taken  to 
an  island  in  the  Tiber,  and  there  left  to  die  of 
starvation  and  exposure'  (5).  Slaves  were  prac- 
tically without  any  rights  whatever  to  the  world 
in  which  they  lived.  A  Roman  could  take  the  life 
of  his  Gallic  slave  with  as  complete  impunity  as 
an  American  can  slay  his  bovine  servant  to-day. 
Romans,  in  short,  looked  upon  and  treated  non- 
Romans  about  as  human  beings  to-day  look  upon 
and  treat  non-humans — as  mere  prey. 

V.  Modern  Ethics. 

But  the  peoples  of  the  ancient  world  are  not 
the  only  human  beings  who  have  suffered  from 
the  psychological  bequests  of  savages.  Modern 
states  and  peoples,  notwithstanding  their  far-flung 
professions  of  righteousness,  manifest,  though  in  a 
somewhat  weakened  form,  the  same  ethnic  preju- 
dices and  the  same  senseless  antipathies  as  those 
displayed  by  the  ancients.  Remnants  of  the 
primitive  tribal  morality  are  found  in  the  moral 
habits  and  conceptions  of  every  people,  however 
emancipated  they  may  imagine  themselves  to  be. 
Many  a  person  who  would  not  think  of  swindling 


268  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

one  of  his  neighbours  will  not  hesitate  to  swindle 
a  foreigner,  especially  if  the  foreigner  happens  to 
be  of  a  nationality  much  removed  in  language, 
colour,    manners,    or    interests    from    his    own. 
Morality  is  genetic.     It  is  not  a  consistent  some- 
thing— something  reasoned  out  and  framed  accord- 
ing to  the  facts.    It  has  grown  up.    It  is  essentially 
tribal — whether  it  is  confined  to  a  family,  as  is 
done  by  some,  to  a  corporation   or  trade,  to   a 
nation,  to  an  artificial  fraternity,  or  to  a  species. 
We  are,  in  fact,  all  of  us,  even  the  broadest  and 
most   illuminated,  simply   savages   more   or  less 
leafed  out.     We  all  suffer,  as  men  have  always 
suffered,  from  the  over-vividness  of  the  presenta- 
tive  powers  of  the  mind  (sensation  and  perception) 
compared  with  the  representative  powers  (memory 
and  imagination).     We  all  exaggerate  out  of  their 
proper  perspective  in  the  phenomena  of  a  universe 
the  things  that  are  around  us  and  about  us — the 
events  we  witness  or  take  part  in,  the  things  that 
are  ours,  and  the  affairs  of  the  street,  city,  state, 
neighbourhood,  world,  and  time,  in  which  we  live. 
Every  human  being  (the  sage  less  than  the  savage, 
but  the  sage  to  some  extent)  is  inclined  to  lump 
together  as  foreign  to  him,  and  as  more  or  less 
useless  and  shadowy  in   themselves,  the  things, 
beings,  and  events  that  are  distant,  and  to  con- 
sider them  of  less  reality  than  those  with  which 
he  is  directly  concerned,  and  of  which  his  know- 
ledge is  immediate.     The  evolution  of  consciousness 
in  its  social  and  ethical  aspects  consists  in  the  evolution 
of  the  ability  to  make  real  and  vivid  the  phenomena 


MODERN  ETHICS  269 

that  are  more  and  more  distant  in  both  space  and 
time. 

The  Chinese  call  their  country  'the  flower  of 
the  middle,'  and  believe  it  to  be  the  central  and 
choicest  portion  of  the  earth's  surface.  All  those 
beyond  the  bounds  of  '  The  Heavenly  Flower 
Kingdom '  are,  by  those  on  the  inside,  venomously 
lumped  together  as  'foreign  devils.'  The  people 
of  Spain  look  upon  themselves  in  much  the  same 
way  as  the  Chinese  look  upon  themselves,  although 
they  are  in  reality  the  most  belated  of  all  peoples 
to-day  pretending  to  be  civilised.  There  are  a 
few  travelled  and  educated  Spaniards  who  realise 
the  pitiful  place  held  by  their  country  in  the 
family  of  reputable  states.  '  But  the  great  mass 
of  the  people  are  not  only  perfectly  satisfied  with 
their  condition,  but  consider  themselves  the  most 
fortunate  of  all  God's  creatures.  They  never  go 
outside  of  their  country  and  never  read  a  foreign 
newspaper  or  book.  Like  the  Chinese,  they  con- 
sider other  nations  barbarians,  and  point  to  Madrid 
as  the  centre  of  civilisation.'  The  French,  down 
to  the  nineteenth  century,  confiscated  the  property 
of  all  aliens  who  died  within  the  realm ;  and  the 
savage  practice  of  punishing  one  alien  for  the 
crimes  of  another  alien  was  sanctioned  by  the 
laws  of  England  down  to  the  middle  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  It  has  been  only  a  day 
in  the  history  of  the  world  since  Caucasians 
hunted  their  dusky  brothers  in  Africa  like  '  wild 
animals,'  and  sold  and  loaned  and  lashed  them 
as  we  do  horses  to-day.  Men  now  living  can 


270  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

remember  when  it  made  no  difference  how  exalted 
in  character  men  might  be :  if  a  certain  pigment  of 
their  bodies  was  dark,  they  were  '  niggers.'  They 
had  no  '  souls '  as  pale  men  had,  and  no  more 
chance  of  paradise  than  cattle.  At  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  incredible  as  it  may 
seem,  every  country  of  Europe  and  America  held 
slaves,  and  was  engaged  in  the  soulless  avocation 
of  man-hunting  in  Africa.  Tens  of  thousands  of 
Africa's  children  were  annually  seized  by  prowling 
pirate  bands  and  exported  to  distant  lands  to 
wear  their  lives  out  in  disgrace  and  drudgery.  It 
was  not  until  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth 
century  that  civilised  nations,  following  the  initia- 
tive of  England,  finally  abolished  human  slavery, 
the  United  States  and  Brazil  being  the  last  to  act. 
The  Christian  sneers  at  all  who  do  not  bow  down 
to  his  deities  and  worship  according  to  his  ritual, 
as  'heathens'  or  'freethinkers,'  and  to  the  Mos- 
lem all  who  are  not  followers  of  '  the  True 
Prophet '  are  '  infidel  dogs.'  The  history  of  these 
two  religions  is  a  chronicle  of  almost  unparalleled 
crimes  upon  disbelievers. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  to  Arabia  or 
Cathay,  nor  even  necessary  to  read  history,  in 
order  to  find  examples  of  bigotry  and  provincial- 
ism. It  is  only  necessary  to  open  our  eyes. 
Americans  are  not  a  peculiar  people — unless  it  be 
in  the  unbridled  character  of  their  conceit.  All 
the  barbarism  is  not  behind  us  nor  around  us. 
History  looks  dark  and  discouraging  to  us,  as  we 
turn  its  terrible  pages,  but  we  would  see  some- 


MODERN  ETHICS  271 

thing  just  as  discouraging  if  we  would  look  into  a 
mirror.  The  old  savage  spirit  still  circulates  in 
our  veins.  The  '  foreigner  '  is  not  an  enemy,  but 
he  is  still  an  individual  whose  chief  significance  is 
in  his  '  fleece.'  If  the  '  foreigner '  did  not  ease 
our  economic  theories  by  benevolently  '  paying 
the  tax,'  it  would  be  hard  to  tell  what  would 
become  of  him.  Those  who  suffer  from  a  different 
government,  speak  a  different  language,  or  laud 
other  gods  are  regarded  by  us  as  distinctly  inferior 
to  ourselves.  Millions  of  dollars  are  annually 
squandered  by  self-righteous  societies  in  sending 
missionaries  to  the  other  side  of  the  planet  to 
peoples  who  need  evangels  of  mercy  and  humanity 
far  less  than  we  do  ourselves.  In  these  times  of 
ecclesiastical  enterprise,  however,  missionaries  are 
being  superseded,  as  agents  of  evangelisation,  by 
the  more  effective  inventions  of  Messrs.  Maxim 
and  Krupp.  '  American '  is  regarded  by  us  as  the 
synonym  of  perfection,  and  to  be  'patriotic'  is  to 
give  unthinking  enthusiasm  to  every  scheme  in- 
cubated by  wolfish  spoilsmen.  Crimes  of  conquest 
carried  on  by  others  become,  when  undertaken  by 
us,  shining  masterpieces  of  '  benevolent  assimila- 
tion.' We  are  not  so  far  from  the  naked  and 
unkempt  contemporaries  of  the  cave-bear  and 
sabre-toothed  lion  as  we  imagine  we  are.  To 
carry  a  bayonet,  and  especially  to  redden  it  with 
an  alien's  blood,  is  here  in  this  degenerate 
land  of  Jefferson,  more  glorious  than  to  create 
a  book.  Captains  particularly  competent  as 
butchers,  though  their  characters  be  as  coarse  as  a 


272  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

savage  chiefs,  are  hailed  as  heroes  by  thousands 
besides  silly  women,  and  held  up,  like  the  cut- 
throats of  the  Kukis,  as  the  highest  exemplars  of 
right-doing.  Old  Rameses,  holding  by  their  hair 
a  half-dozen  dwarfs,  and  ostentatiously  cutting  off 
their  heads  with  a  single  sweep  of  his  sword,  finds 
his  modern  counterpart  in  miserable  Americans 
pompously  gloating  over  the  offhand  slaughter  of 
the  children  of  distant  archipelagoes. 

VI.  The  Ethics  of  Human  Beings  toward  Non- 
Human  Beings. 

But  the  most  mournful  instance  of  provincial 
ethics  afforded  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth  is 
not  that  furnished  by  the  varieties  of  the  human 
species  in  their  conduct  toward  each  other,  but 
that  afforded  by  the  human  race  as  a  whole  in 
its  treatment  of  the  non-human  races.  Human 
nature  is  nowhere  so  hideous,  and  human  con- 
science is  nowhere  so  profoundly  inoperative,  as  in 
their  disregard  for  the  life  and  happiness  of  the 
non-human  animal  world.  With  the  develop- 
ment of  the  representative  powers  of  the  mind, 
the  widening  and  mutualising  of  human  activities, 
and  the  consequent  enlargement  of  the  human 
horizon,  the  feeling  of  amity  has  spread  and 
intensified,  until  to-day,  notwithstanding  all  that 
is  true  of  human  sectionalism,  the  ethical  systems 
of  civilised  peoples  include,  theoretically  at  least, 
and  more  or  less  seriously,  all  human  beings 
whatsoever.  Ethical  consciousness  has  extended 
from  individual  to  family,  from  family  to  clan, 


THE  ETHICS  OF  HUMAN  BEINGS    273 

from  clan  to  tribe,  from  tribe  to  confederacy, 
from  confederacy  to  kingdom,  from  kingdom  to 
race,  from  race  to  species,  until,  in  the  case  of 
many  millions  of  men,  ethical  feeling  has  reached, 
with  greater  or  less  vividness  and  consistency,  the 
anthropocentric  stage  of  evolution.  The  fact  that 
an  individual  is  a  man — that  is,  that  he  belongs  to 
the  human  species  of  animals — entitles  him  in  all 
civilised  lands  to  the  fundamental  rights  and 
privileges  of  existence.  The  rights  to  life,  liberty, 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  are  believed  to-day,  by 
all  exalted  minds,  to  be  the  inalienable  properties 
of  every  human  being  who  comes  into  the  world. 

But,  except  by  occasional  individuals  here  and 
there  whose  emotions  are  more  civilised  than  the 
rest,  or  whose  conceptions  are  more  ample  and 
clear,  ethical  relations  are  not  extended  by  human 
beings  beyond  the  bounds  of  their  own  species. 
Non-human  millions  are  outsiders.  They  are 
looked  upon  and  treated  by  human  beings  as  if 
they  were  an  entirely  different  order  of  existences, 
with  entirely  different  purposes  and  susceptibilities, 
from  human  beings.  They  are  not  considered  to 
be  living  beings  at  all,  as  human  beings  are, 
who  are  here  in  the  world  to  enjoy  life  and 
all  that  life  holds  that  is  dear  to  a  living  being. 
They  belong  to  the  same  class  of  existences  as 
the  waves  of  the  sea  and  the  weeds  of  the  field. 
They  are  looked  upon  as  mere  things  —  mere 
moving,  multiplying  objects,  without  the  slightest 
equity  in  the  world  in  which  they  find  themselves. 
They  may  be  set  upon,  beaten,  maimed,  starved, 

18 


274  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

assassinated,  eaten,  insulted,  deceived,  imprisoned, 
robbed,  tormented,  skinned  alive,  shot  down  for 
pastime,  cut  to  pieces  out  of  curiosity,  or  com- 
pelled to  undergo  any  other  enormity  or  victimisa- 
tion anybody  can  think  of  or  is  disposed  to  visit 
upon  them.  It  is  enough  almost  to  make  knaves 
shudder,  the  cold-blooded  and  business-like  man- 
ner in  which  we  cut  their  throats,  dash  out  their 
brains,  and  discuss  their  flavour  at  our  cannibal- 
istic feasts.  As  Plutarch  says,  'Lions,  tigers, 
and  serpents  we  call  savage  and  ferocious,  yet 
we  ourselves  come  behind  them  in  no  species  of 
barbarity.'  Accustomed  from  our  cradle  up  to 
look  upon  violence  and  assassination,  we  have 
become  so  habituated  and  hardened  to  these  things 
that  we  perpetrate  them  and  see  them  perpetrated 
with  the  same  indifference  as  that  with  which  we 
watch  waves  die  on  the  beach.  Human  beings 
are,  in  fact  ('paragons'  though  they  pretend  to 
be),  the  most  predatory  and  brutal  of  all  animals 
— the  great  bone  -  breakers  and  bone -pickers  ot 
the  planet. 

It  is  scarcely  possible,  astounding  as  it  is,  to 
commit  crimes  upon  any  beings  in  this  world, 
except  men.  There  are  no  beings  in  the  universe, 
according  to  human  beings,  except  themselves. 
All  others  are  commodities.  They  are  of  conse- 
sequence  only  because  they  have  thighs  and  can 
fill  up  the  unoccupied  places  of  the  human  alimen- 
tary. Human  beings  are  'persons,'  and  have 
souls  and  gods  and  places  to  go  to  when  they  die. 
But  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  other  races  of 


THE  ETHICS  OF  HUMAN  BEINGS    275 

terrestrial  inhabitants  are  mere  'animals,'  mere 
'  brutes,'  and  '  beasts  of  the  field,'  '  livestock  '  and 
'vermin.'  Every  crime  capable  of  being  perpe- 
trated by  one  being  upon  another  is  day  after  day 
rained  upon  them,  and  with  an  equanimity  that 
would  do  honour  to  the  managers  of  an  inferno. 
Human  beings  preach  as  the  cardinal  rule  oi 
morality  —  and  they  seem  never  to  tire  of  its 
reiteration — that  they  should  do  unto  others  as 
they  would  that  others  would  do  unto  them ;  but 
they  hypocritically  confine  its  application  to  the 
members  of  their  own  crowd,  notwithstanding 
there  are  the  same  reasons  identically  for  extending 
it  to  all  creatures.  The  happiness  of  the  human 
species  is  assumed  to  be  so  much  more  precious 
than  that  of  others  that  the  most  sacred  interests 
of  others  are  unhesitatingly  sacrificed  in  order 
that  human  desires  may  all  be  fastidiously  catered 
to.  Even  for  a  tooth  or  a  feather  or  a  piece  of 
skin  to  wear  on  human  vanity,  forests  are  depopu- 
lated and  the  land  filled  with  the  dead  and 
dying.  Assassination  is  the  commonest  and  most 
fashionable  of  human  pastimes.  Jaded  systems 
are  regularly  recuperated  by  massacre.  Men  arm 
themselves — men  who  roar  about  '  rights,'  and 
even  ministers  of  mercy — and  go  out  on  killing 
expeditions  with  as  little  compunction  as  savages 
put  on  war-paint.  They  come  back  from  their 
campaigns  of  crime  like  the  cut-throats  of  old 
Rome,  trailing  their  victims  as  trophies,  and 
expecting  to  be  hailed  as  heroes  for  the  hells  they 
have  established.  Barbarians  preponderate,  and 

18— a 


276  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

morality  is  turned  inside  out.  Cruelty  is  lionised, 
and  broad-mindedness  is  rewarded  with  a  sneer. 
Compassion  is  a  disease,  and  to  be  fashionable 
is  to  be  a  fiend.  If  non-human  peoples  had  no 
nerves  and  no  choice  of  emotions,  and  were  utterly 
indifferent  to  life,  they  could  scarcely  be  treated 
more  completely  as  personal  nonentities. 

The  denial  by  human  animals  of  ethical  rela- 
tions to  the  rest  of  the  animal  world  is  a 
phenomenon  not  differing  either  in  character  or 
cause  from  the  denial  of  ethical  relations  by  a 
tribe,  people,  or  race  of  human  beings  to  the  rest 
of  the  human  world.  The  provincialism  of  Jews 
toward  non-Jews,  of  Greeks  toward  non-Greeks,  of 
Romans  toward  non-Romans,  of  Moslems  toward 
non-Moslems,  and  of  Caucasians  toward  non-Cau- 
casians, is  not  one  thing  and  the  provincialism  of 
human  beings  toward  non  -human  beings  another. 
They  are  all  manifestations  of  the  same  thing. 
The  fact  that  these  various  acts  are  performed  by 
different  individuals  and  upon  different  individuals, 
and  are  performed  at  different  times  and  places, 
does  not  invalidate  the  essential  sameness  of  their 
natures.  Crimes  are  not  classified  (except  by 
savages  or  their  immediate  derivatives)  according 
to  the  similarity  of  those  who  do  them  or  those 
who  suffer  from  them,  but  by  grouping  them 
according  to  the  similarity  of  their  intrinsic  quali- 
ties. All  acts  of  provincialism  consist  essentially 
in  the  disinclination  or  inability  to  be  universal, 
and  they  belong  in  reality,  all  of  them,  to  the 
same  species  of  conduct.  There  is,  in  fact,  but 


THE  ETHICS  OF  HUMAN  BEINGS    277 

one  great  crime  in  the  universe,  and  most  of  the 
instances  of  terrestrial  wrong-doing  are  instances 
of  this  crime.  It  is  the  crime  of  exploitation — the 
considering  by  some  beings  of  themselves  as 
ends,  and  of  others  as  their  means — the  refusal  to 
recognise  the  equal,  or  the  approximately  equal, 
rights  of  all  to  life  and  its  legitimate  rewards — the 
crime  of  acting  toward  others  as  one  would  that 
others  would  not  act  toward  him.  For  millions 
of  years,  almost  ever  since  life  began,  this  crime 
has  been  committed,  in  every  nook  and  quarter  of 
the  inhabited  globe. 

Every  being  is  an  end.  In  other  words,  every 
being  is  to  be  taken  into  account  in  determining 
the  ends  of  conduct.  This  is  the  only  consistent 
outcome  of  the  ethical  process  which  is  in  course 
of  evolution  on  the  earth.  This  world  was  not 
made  and  presented  to  any  particular  clique  for 
its  exclusive  use  or  enjoyment.  The  earth  belongs, 
if  it  belongs  to  anybody,  to  the  beings  who  inhabit 
it — to  all  of  them.  And  when  one  being  or  set  of 
beings  sets  itself  up  as  the  sole  end  for  which  the 
universe  exists,  and  looks  upon  and  acts  toward 
others  as  mere  means  to  this  end,  it  is  usurpation, 
nothing  else  and  never  can  be  anything  else,  it 
matters  not  by  whom  or  upon  whom  the  usurpa- 
tion is  practised.  A  tyrant  who  puts  his  own 
welfare  and  aggrandisement  in  the  place  of  the 
welfare  of  a  people,  and  compels  the  whole  people 
to  act  as  a  means  to  his  own  personal  ends,  is  not 
more  certainly  a  usurper  than  is  a  species  or 
variety  which  puts  its  welfare  in  the  place  of  the 


278  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

welfare  of  all  the  inhabitants  of  a  world.  The 
refusal  to  put  one's  self  in  the  place  of  others  and  to 
act  toward  them  as  one  would  that  they  would 
act  toward  him  does  not  depend  for  its  wrongful- 
ness  upon  who  makes  the  refusal  or  upon  whether 
the  refusal  falls  upon  this  or  that  individual  or  set. 
Deeds  are  right  and  wrong  in  themselves;  and 
whether  they  are  right  or  wrong,  good  or  evil, 
proper  or  improper,  whether  they  should  be  done 
or  should  not  be  done,  depends  upon  their  effects  upon 
the  welfare  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  universe.  The 
basic  mistake  that  has  ever  been  made  in  this 
egoistic  world  in  the  judging  and  classifying  of 
acts  has  been  the  mistake  of  judging  and  classify- 
ing them  with  reference  to  their  effects  upon 
some  particular  fraction  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
universe.  In  pure  egoism  conduct  is  judged  as 
good  or  bad  solely  with  reference  to  the  results, 
immediate  or  remote,  which  that  conduct  pro- 
duces, or  is  calculated  to  produce,  on  the  self. 
To  the  savage,  that  is  right  or  wrong  which  affects 
favourably  or  unfavourably  himself  or  his  tribe.  And 
this  sectional  spirit  of  the  savage  has,  as  has  been 
shown,  characterised  the  moral  conceptions  of  the 
peoples  of  all  times.  The  practice  human  beings 
have  to-day — the  practice  of  those  (relatively) 
broad  and  emancipated  minds  who  are  large  enough 
to  rise  above  the  petty  prejudices  and  'patriotisms' 
of  the  races  and  corporations  of  men,  and  are  able 
to  view  '  the  world  as  their  country '  (the  world  of 
human  beings,  of  course) — the  practice  such  minds 
have  of  estimating  conduct  solely  with  reference 


THE  ETHICS  OF  HUMAN  BEINGS    379 

to  its  effects  upon  the  human  species  of  animals  is 
a  practice  which,  while  infinitely  broader  and  more 
nearly  ultimate  than  that  of  the  savage,  belongs 
logically  in  the  same  category  with  it.  The  par- 
tially emancipated  human  being  who  extends  his 
moral  sentiments  to  all  the  members  of  his  own 
species,  but  denies  to  all  other  species  the  justice 
and  humanity  he  accords  to  his  own,  is  making 
on  a  larger  scale  the  same  ethical  mess  of  it  as  the 
savage.  The  only  consistent  attitude,  since  Darwin 
established  the  unity  of  life  (and  the  attitude  we 
shall  assume,  if  we  ever  become  really  civilised),  is 
the  attitude  of  universal  gentleness  and  humanity. 

'  The  world  is  my  country,'  said  Thomas  Paine, 
and  every  man,  woman,  and  child  capable  oi 
appreciating  the  exalted  sentiment  applauded. 
But  '  the  world '  of  the  great  freethinker  was 
inhabited  by  men  only. 

The  following  lines  were  written  by  Robert 
Whitaker,  and  first  -printed  in  a  San  Francisco 
newspaper : 

*  My  Country  is  the  world  I    I  count 

No  son  of  man  my  foe, 
Whether  the  warm  life  currents  mount 

And  mantle  brows  like  snow, 
Or  whether  yellow,  brown,  or  black, 
The  face  that  into  mine  looks  back. 

•  My  Native  Land  is  Mother  Earth, 

And  all  men  are  my  kin, 
Whether  of  rude  or  gentle  birth, 

However  steeped  in  sin ; 
Or  rich  or  poor,  or  great  or  small, 
1  count  them  brothers  one  and  alL 


28o  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

*  My  Flag  is  the  star-spangled  sky, 

Woven  without  a  seam, 
Where  dawn  and  sunset  colours  lie, 

Fair  as  an  angel's  dream, 
The  Flag  that  still  unstained,  untorn, 
Floats  over  all  of  mortal  born 

'  My  Party  is  all  humankind, 

My  Platform,  brotherhood ; 
I  count  all  men  of  honest  mind 

Who  work  for  human  good, 
And  for  the  hope  that  gleams  afar. 
My  comrades  in  the  holy  war. 

*  My  Country  is  the  world  I     I  scorn 

No  lesser  love  than  mine, 
But  calmly  wait  that  happy  morn 

When  all  shall  own  this  sign, 
And  love  of  country,  as  of  clan, 
Shall  yield  to  love  of  Man.' 

Robert  Whitaker,  you  are  a  grand  improvement 
on  the  'jingo.'  But  you  are  still  too  small. 
There  are  conceptions  as  much  more  prophetic 
and  exalted  than  yours  as  your  conception  its 
superior  to  that  of  the  Figian. 

Broad  as  he  is  who  can  look  upon  all  men  as 
his  brethren  and  countrymen  —  broad  as  he  is 
compared  with  those  groundlings  called  'patriots,' 
who  can  see  nothing  clearly  beyond  the  bounds  of 
the  political  unit  to  which  they  belong — he  is  not 
broad  enough.  He  is  still  a  sectionalist,  zpartialist. 
He  represents  but  a  stage  in  the  process  of  ethical 
expansion.  He  is,  in  fact,  small  compared  with 
the  universalist,  just  as  the  savage  is  small 
compared  with  the  philanthropist.  '  Mankind,' 


THE  ETHICS  OF  HUMAN  BEINGS     281 

'  humanity,'  '  all  men,'  '  the  whole  human  family ' 
— these  are  big  conceptions,  too  big  for  the  poor 
little  nubbins  of  brains  with  which  most  millions 
make  the  effort  to  think.  But  they  are  pitifully 
small  compared  with  that  grand  conception  of 
kinship  which  takes  in  all  the  races  that  live  and 
move  upon  the  earth.  Smaller  yet  are  these 
conceptions  compared  with  that  sublime  and 
supreme  synthesis  which  embraces  not  only  the 
present  generation  of  terrestrial  inhabitants,  but 
which  extends  longitudinally  as  well  as  laterally, 
extends  in  time  as  well  as  in  space,  and  embraces 
the  generations  which  shall  grow  out  of  the  exist- 
ing generation  and  which  are  yet  unborn — that 
conception  which  recognises  earth-life  as  a  single 
process,  world-wide  and  immortal,  every  part  related 
and  akin  to  every  other  part,  and  each  generation 
linked  to  an  unending  posterity. 

Every  individual,  therefore,  emancipated  enough 
to  judge  of  acts  of  conduct  according  to  their 
intrinsic  natures  and  consequences  rather  than 
according  to  some  local  or  traditional  bias,  cannot 
help  knowing  that  the  exploitation  of  birds  and 
quadrupeds  for  human  whim  or  convenience  is  an 
offence  against  the  laws  of  morality,  not  different 
in  kind  from  the  offences  denounced  in  human 
laws  as  robbery  and  murder.  The  creophagist 
and  the  hunter  exemplify  the  same  somnambulism, 
are  the  authors  of  the  ta  ne  kind  of  conduct,  and 
belong  literally  in  the  same  category  of  offenders, 
as  the  cannibal  and  the  slave-driver.  To  take  the 
life  of  an  ox  for  his  muscles,  or  to  kill  a  sheep  for 


282  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

his  skin  is  murder,  and  those  who  do  these  things 
or  cause  them  to  be  done  are  murderers  just  as 
actually  as  highwaymen  are  who  blow  off  the  heads 
of  hapless  wayfarers  for  their  guineas.  If  these 
things  seem  untrue,  it  is  not  because  they  are  untrue, 
but  because  those  to  whom  they  seem  so  are  unable 
to  judge  conduct  from  the  quadrupedal  point  of  view. 
If  there  were  in  this  world  beings  as  much  more 
clever  than  Caucasians  as  Caucasians  are  more 
clever  than  cows  and  sheep,  and  these  beings 
should  regard  themselves  as  the  darlings  of  the 
gods  and  should  attach  a  fictitious  dignity  and 
importance  to  their  own  lives,  but  should  look 
upon  Caucasians  as  simply  so  much  'beef  and 
'  mutton,'  these  bleached  terrorists  of  the  world 
would  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations  of  ex- 
perience probably  become  sufficiently  illumined 
to  realise  that  current  human  conceptions  of  cows 
and  sheep  are  not  only  preposterous,  but  fiendish. 

VII.  The  Origin  of  Provincialism. 

Human  provincialism,  all  of  it,  is  the  conse- 
quence of  a  common  cause — the  provincialism  of  the 
savage.  Back  of  the  provincialism  of  the  savage 
is,  of  course,  the  antecedent  fact  of  primordial 
egoism.  The  savage  is  the  common  ancestor  of 
all  men,  and  as  such  has  imparted  to  all  men 
their  general  characters  of  mind  and  heart. 
Everything  that  grows,  whether  it  be  a  tree,  a 
human  being,  a  grass  blade,  or  a  race,  grows  from 
something.  This  something,  this  germ  or  embryo 
from  which  each  thing  springs,  imparts  to  the 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  PROVINCIALISM     283 

thing  its  fundamental  characters.  However  far 
anything  may  evolve,  and  however  much  it  may 
come  to  differ  superficially  from  its  original,  it 
will  always  remain  at  heart  more  or  less  faithful 
to  the  facts  of  its  genesis.  This  hereditary 
tendency  of  everything,  this  tendency  toward 
invariability,  is  the  conservative,  or  inertia!  ten- 
dency of  the  universe.  All  races,  colours,  and 
conditions  of  men — civilised,  slightly  civilised, 
and  barbarous — extend  back  to,  and  take  root  in, 
savages,  just  as  all  savages  have  probably  sprung 
in  some  still  more  remote  period  of  the  past  from 
a  single  stirp  of  anthropoids.  The  savage  is, 
therefore,  the  author  of  human  nature  and 
philosophy.  Just  as  the  fish,  which  is  the  com- 
mon ancestor  of  all  amphibians,  reptiles,  birds, 
and  mammals,  has  predetermined  the  general 
structural  style  of  all  subsequently  evolved  verte- 
brates, so  the  savage,  as  the  original  ancestor  of 
mankind,  has  predetermined  the  general  mental 
and  dispositional  make-up  of  all  higher  men. 
That  civilised  and  semi-civilised  men  are  naturally 
narrow  and  revengeful,  selfish  and  superstitious, 
and  find  it  next  to  impossible  to  feel  and  act 
toward  others  as  they  would  like  to  have  others 
feel  and  act  toward  them,  is,  therefore,  not  more 
mysterious  than  that  vertebrates  have  red  blood, 
two  eyes,  two  pairs  of  limbs,  and  a  backbone  with 
a  bulging  brain-box  at  the  hither  end  of  it.  Just 
as  the  habits,  beliefs,  and  conceptions  of  the  child 
persist,  often  but  slightly  modified,  in  the  full- 
grown  man  or  woman,  so  the  habits,  beliefs,  and 


284  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

conceptions,  formed  by  the  race  in  its  childhood, 
continue,  under  the  influence  of  the  same  laws  ol 
inertia,  on  into  the  more  mature  stages  of  racial 
development.  Human  nature  changes  with  great 
reluctance,  and  only  in  its  superficial  aspects  at 
that.  There  are  cave-men,  men  with  the  primitive 
ideas  and  practices  of  the  Stone  Age,  and  men  in 
the  pastoral  and  hunting  stages  of  mankind,  in 
all  the  highest  societies  of  men.  There  is  scarcely 
a  habit,  vice,  occupation,  amusement,  crime,  or 
trait  of  character,  found  among  men  of  the 
past  but  may  be  seen  still  among  our  contem- 
poraries. 

Altruism  (other-love)  is  just  as  natural  as 
egoism  (self-love)  is.  There  is  not  so  much  of  it 
in  the  world  as  there  is  of  egoism.  But  that  is 
simply  the  misfortune  of  our  place  of  existence. 
There  is  no  reason  why  there  might  not  have  been 
as  much,  or  even  more,  under  different  conditions. 
With  the  same  antecedents,  nothing  can,  of  course, 
happen  differently  from  what  does  happen.  But 
with  different  antecedents,  different  causes,  the 
results  are  bound  to  be  different.  Civilised  men 
are  not  beings  of  altruism,  because  they  are  not 
the  effects  of  that  kind  of  causes.  But  there  is  no 
reason  why  there  might  not  be  a  world — several  of 
them,  in  fact,  or  even  a  universeful— where  the 
inhabitants  have  never  known  or  heard  of  such  an 
indelicate  thing  as  of  beings  preferring  themselves 
to  others — where  it  is  as  natural  for  them  to  act 
toward  each  other  according  to  what  we  call  the 
Golden  Rule  as  it  is  for  us  terrestrial  heathens  to 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  PROVINCIALISM     285 

violate  it.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  of  beings 
with  even  too  much  altruism.  The  ideal  condition 
is  one  of  balanced  egoism  and  altruism — one  in 
which  each  thinks  as  much  of  others  as  he  does  of 
himself,  no  more  and  no  less.  And  if  beings  were 
endowed  with  natures  rendering  them  not  only 
willing  but  determined  to  act  primarily  in  the 
interests  of  others,  and  this  condition  of  things 
were  universal,  there  would  be  about  as  much 
discord  and  strife  as  if  everyone  acted  in  the 
interest  of  himself.  The  Golden  Rule  among  a 
lot  of  hypothetical  otherists  like  this  would  be  the 
opposite  of  ours,  for,  instead  of  emphasising  the 
importance  of  others  as  we  do,  they  would  need 
to  encourage  regard  for  self.  Wouldn't  it  seem 
original  to  live  in  a  world  where  men  were  sent  to 
gaol  for  over-benevolence,  and  where  sermons  had 
to  be  preached  on  such  texts  as,  '  Love  thyself  as 
thy  neighbour ' ;  'It  is  more  blessed  to  receive 
than  to  give ' ;  '  Avoid  doing  to  yourself  that  which 
you  do  not  like  when  done  to  others ' ;  '  The  Lord 
loves  a  cheerful  taker ' ;  and  the  like  ? 

The  persistence  with  which  savage  ideas  and 
instincts  continue  to  influence  men  long  after 
those  ideas  and  instincts  have  really  become 
anachronistic  and  vestigial  is  well  illustrated  by 
civilised  men  and  women  everywhere.  The  sun 
continues  to  '  rise '  and  '  set '  in  all  civilised  lands 
just  as  it  used  to  do  to  the  savage,  although  men 
have  long  since  learned  that  it  does  not  do  either. 
Hell,  as  originally  conceived,  was  an  actual  sub- 
terranean region,  and  heaven  was  an  abode 


286  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

located  a  few  hours'  journey  above  the  supposedly 
flat  earth.  To-day  we  continue  to  say  'up  to 
heaven,'  and  'down  to  hell'  (never  'down  to  heaven' 
and  'up  to  hell'),  and  always  think  of  these 
places  as  being  thus  relatively  located,  although  it 
is  extremely  doubtful  whether  any  really  sane  mind 
continues  to  believe  that  hell  is  on  the  inside  of 
the  earth  (or  any  place  else,  for  that  matter),  and 
although  up  means  simply  away  from  the  centre 
of  the  earth,  and  away  from  the  centre  of  a  ball 
means  literally  every  possible  direction.  The 
theological  theories  of  the  origin,  nature,  and 
destiny  of  man  and  of  the  universe  in  general, 
all  of  which  originated  in  savage  or  semi-savage 
minds,  and  all  of  which  bear  the  unmistakable 
traces  of  their  origin,  continue  to  cling  to  the 
minds  of  the  masses  of  civilised  men,  notwith- 
standing the  inherent  absurdity  of  these  theories, 
and  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  their  unsound- 
ness  is  vouched  for  by  the  most  positive  and 
unanimous  assurances  from  the  scientific  world. 
Why  should  civilised  men  and  women,  any  of 
them,  be  indifferent  to  the  sufferings  of  others,  or 
find  delight  in  such  loathsome  avocations  as  the 
fishing  and  hunting  of  their  fellow-creatures  ? 
Because  their  ancestors  were  savages,  and  they  are 
not  yet  sufficiently  evolved  to  be  independent  of  the 
instincts  of  their  savage  sires.  There  is  no  other 
explanation.  No  human  being  could  enjoy  seeing 
a  pack  of  hounds  bunt  down  and  rend  to  pieces  a 
poor  harmless  hare — unless  he  were  a  savage.  No 
human  being  could  go  out  to  the  abodes  of  the 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  PROVINCIALISM     287 

squirrel  and  quail,  and  shoot  murderous  balls  into 
their  beautiful  bodies  for  food  or  fun — unless  he 
were  a  savage.  No  human  being  would  lounge 
all  day  about  the  margins  of  a  brook,  blind  to 
the  beauties  of  the  stream  and  the  glories  of  forest 
and  sky,  in  order  to  thrust  brutal  hooks  into  the 
lips  of  those  whom  he  deceives,  and  drag  them 
from  their  waters  to  suffocate  in  the  sun — unless 
he  were  a  savage.  No  human  being  would  have 
palaces  and  parks  and  yachts  and  equipages, 
townships  of  lands,  packs  of  hounds,  and  studs  of 
horses,  troops  of  lackeys  and  nothing  to  do,  when 
all  around  him  are  the  men  and  women  who  made 
this  wealth,  half  clad  and  half  starved,  suffocating 
in  shanties  and  working  like  wretches  from  morn- 
ing till  night — unless  he  were  a. savage.  All  of 
these  deeds  are  savage  deeds,  deeds  of  exceeding 
thoughtlessness  and  brutality,  and,  instead  of 
being  enjoyable,  are  to  every  emancipated  mind 
positively  painful. 

Hunting,  fishing,  and  fighting  are  the  chief 
occupations  of  savage  life.  Back  of  the  activities 
displayed  in  these  occupations  are  powerful  in- 
stincts prompting  and  sustaining  them.  Civilised 
peoples  are  devoted  primarily  to  the  arts  of  in- 
dustry and  peace.  But  there  are  enough  savages 
in  every  civilised  society,  and  enough  of  the  savage 
spirit  in  those  who  pretend  to  approximate  the 
civilised  state,  to  give  to  civilised  life  a  decidedly 
barbaric  aspect.  War  is  a  more  or  less  regular 
exercise,  and  killing  and  competing  and  torturing 
enter  largely  into  the  pastimes  of  all  peoples. 


288  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

Next  to  eating,  fighting,  in  one  form  or  another, 
is  the  favourite  pursuit  of  men  nearly  everywhere 
on  holy  days  and  days  of  leisure.  Whenever 
human  beings  have  any  energy  or  time  left  over 
from  what  they  are  required  to  spend  in  maintain- 
ing their  existence,  they  use  it  in  fighting  some 
body  or  in  watching  somebody  else  fight.  And 
generally  the  more  brutal  and  sanguinary  the 
conflict,  the  more  popular  and  satisfying  it  is. 
Witness  the  bull-fights  and  cock-fights  of  Spain 
and  Mexico,  the  fisticuffs  of  Anglo-Saxons,  and 
the  baseball  and  slugball  battles  of  the  Americans, 
where  eager  thousands  gather  and  roar  for  hours 
like  hysterical  idiots  simply  to  see  one  animal  or 
set  of  animals  punish  or  discredit  another.  If 
there  are  no  pigeons  to  shoot,  or  if  the  community 
is  ruled  by  men  and  women  who  are  too  eman- 
cipated to  allow  such  things,  we  make  glass  birds 
and  heroically  bang  away  at  them,  supplying  by 
our  imaginations  the  blood  and  agony  of  real 
carnage.  And  if  we  can't  do  anything  else,  we 
take  some  poor  pig,  that  never  did  anyone  any 
harm  in  the  world,  and  grease  it  and  turn  it  loose, 
and  then  take  after  it  with  knives,  as  Chicago 
butchers  do  on  vacation  days,  and  see  who  can 
cut  its  throat  the  quickest.  This  amusement,  in 
pure  barbarity,  certainly  stands  pretty  near  the 
top  in  the  list  of  human  pastimes  so  far  invented. 
Maybe  it  is  outclassed  by  that  other  contest  some- 
times advertised  as  a  feature  of  butchers'  bar- 
becues, in  which  a  band  of  professional  cut- 
throats compete  to  see  who  can  kill,  skin,  and 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  PROVINCIALISM    289 

eviscerate    the   largest   number   of   their  fellow- 
beings  in  a  given  time. 

Games  and  other  performances  in  which  interest 
is  aroused  by  contending  or  killing  are  all  of  them 
entertainments  gotten  up  primarily  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  under-exercised  savage  within  us. 
The  bloody  carnivals  of  the  ancient  Romans, 
which  seem  so  incomprehensible  to  the  people  of 
to-day,  find  their  diabolical  parallels  right  here  in 
our  high-sniffing  civilisation.  The  bull-pen,  where 
poor  quadrupeds  are  baited  by  gorgeous  assassins 
for  the  amusement  of  Castilian  communities,  and 
the  cockpit  and  the  prize-ring,  where  irate  fowls 
and  naked  thugs  peck  and  pound  each  other  to 
insensibility  for  the  entertainment  of  blood-loving 
mobs,  are  the  legitimate  succcessors  of  the  gladia- 
torial arena  of  the  Romans.  The  gladiatorial 
horror  is  not  changed,  either  in  its  nature  or 
functions,  by  changing  the  combatants  to  cocks 
and  bulls.  The  ringside  roars  that  rise  to-day 
beside  the  Tagus  and  the  Hudson  over  the  fatal 
thrust  of  the  matador  or  the  knockout  lunge  of 
the  pugilist  are  howls  of  barbaric  elation  arising 
from  the  satisfaction  of  the  same  instincts  as  those 
which  seventeen  centuries  ago  made  amphitheatres 
thunder  at  the  spectacle  of  gutted  Gauls.  The 
ability  to  enjoy  strife  and  suffering  in  one  form  is 
not  different  in  kind  from  the  ability  to  be  enter- 
tained by  strife  and  suffering  in  any  other  form. 
Beings  who  can  follow  in  riotous  glee  the  terrified 
form  of  a  fleeing  stag,  or  shout  ecstatically  at 
sight  of  the  death-stagger  of  a  mangled  ox,  are 

19 


THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

psychologically  equipped  to  go  into  raptures  over 
the  blood-curdling  combustions  of  a  literal  hell. 

Few  pastimes  indulged  in  by  civilised  peoples 
are  more  horrible  to  an  emancipated  mind  than 
that  of  bull-fighting.  It  is  the  national  amusement 
of  Spain,  and  is  carried  on  among  all  peoples  who 
have  acquired  their  natures  and  institutions  from 
the  Spanish.  '  Every  Sunday  afternoon,  when- 
ever the  weather  permits,  14,000  or  15,000  men 
and  women,  representing  every  class  of  society, 
mothers  and  grandmothers,  priests  and  monks, 
assemble  at  the  Plaza  de  Toros  in  Madrid  to 
witness  the  most  brutal  spectacle  the  human 
taste  approves.  Six  bulls  are  tortured  and 
worried  until  they  are  exhausted.  Then  they 
are  killed  by  the  thrusts  of  the  sword  of  a 
matador,  who  is  the  most  popular  person  in  the 
community  and  makes  more  money  than  any 
other  man.  Often  as  many  as  twelve  horses  are 
ripped  open  by  the  horns  of  the  infuriated  bulls, 
and  are  allowed  to  die  in  the  presence  of  the 
audience,  with  blood  gushing  from  their  wounds 
and  their  entrails  dragging  upon  the  ground. 
This  sort  of  thing  is  carried  on  not  only  in 
Madrid,  but  is  a  regular  weekly  festival  in  all 
the  cities  of  Spain.  The  horses  are  blindfolded, 
so  they  cannot  even  see  what  attacks  them.  The 
men  who  torture  the  bulls  have  wooden  screens 
behind  which  they  can  dodge  when  pursued,  and 
if  one  of  the  baited  creatures  crowds  too  closely 
upon  any  of  its  tormentors,  the  other  matadors 
throw  a  blanket  over  its  head.  It  is  not  sport, 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  PROVINCIALISM    291 

for  the  poor  bulls  have  no  chance  whatever  to 
escape  or  to  fight  back.  It  is  simply  slow 
butchery,  an  exhibition  of  unmitigated  cowardice 
and  cruelty.  And  yet,  although  the  Spanish  people 
are  the  most  religious  people  of  Europe,  95  per 
cent,  of  the  population  approve  this  atrocious 
barbarism — not  only  approve  it,  but  demand  that 
the  King  shall  appear  in  the  royal  box  at  every 
bull-fight,  or  have  his  throne  upset.' 

The  notorious  'Juke'  family  of  criminals, 
who  sprang  from  a  single  ruffian  who  lived 
in  1720,  has  cost  the  State  of  'New  York 
millions  of  dollars  in  money  and  incalculable 
misery  and  crime.  But  the  initial  savage  progeni- 
tors of  the  human  species  have  stocked  the  earth 
with  the  most  stupendous  array  of  wrong-doers 
—  knaves,  felons,  kings,  warriors,  barbarians, 
butchers,  brutalitarians,  kleptomaniacs,  and  thugs 
— that  has  ever  (let  us  hope)  brought  damnation 
to  a  world. 

VIII.  Universal  Ethics. 

There  are  the  same  reasons  for  the  recognition 
by  human  beings  of  ethical  relations  to  non-human 
beings  as  there  are  for  the  recognition  by  human 
beings  of  ethical  relations  among  themselves 
Analyse  the  reasons  for  being  considerate  toward 
men,  any  variety  of  men,  and  you  will  find  the  samr. 
reasons  to  exist  for  beh.g  considerate  toward  all 
men.  And  analyse  the  reasons  for  being  altruistic 
toward  men  —  for  being  kind  and  sympathetic 
toward  them — and  you  will  find  the  same  reasons 

19 — 2 


292  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

to  exist  for  being  altruistic  toward  those  who  are 
not  men.  The  doctrine  that  we  human  beings 
may  perform  upon  the  other  inhabitants  of  the 
earth  all  sorts  of  injurious  acts,  and  that  these  acts 
when  so  performed  by  us  are  perfectly  right  and 
proper,  but  that  these  same  things  when  done  by 
others  to  us  are  crimes,  is  the  logic  of  pure 
brutalitarianism.  It  is  a  doctrine  utterly  without 
intelligence,  at  variance  with  every  sentiment  of 
justice  and  humanity,  and  has  no  legitimate  exist- 
ence outside  the  fibrous  brains  of  ruffians. 

Right  and  wrong  are  qualities  belonging  to  two 
diverse  kinds  of  conduct.  They  are  the  qualities 
which  render  conduct  respectively  proper  and 
improper.  All  terrestrial  races  (unless  the  very 
lowest)  have  the  power  of  experiencing  two  kinds 
of  conscious  states — the  desirable  (pleasurable) 
and  the  undesirable  (painful).  Now,  if  beings 
were  indifferent  as  to  what  sort  of  conscious 
states  entered  into  and  made  up  their  experiences, 
there  would  manifestly  be  no  such  thing  as  pro- 
priety and  impropriety  in  the  causing  of  these 
states.  But  they  are  not  indifferent.  The  pleasur- 
able experiences  are  the  experiences  all  beings  are 
seeking,  and  the  painful  ones  are  the  ones  they 
are  all  seeking  to  avoid.  Those  acts  which  help 
or  tend  to  help  beings  to  those  experiences  for 
which  they  are  striving  are,  therefore,  right  and 
proper,  and  are,  they  and  their  authors,  called 
good.  While  those  acts  which  compel  beings  to 
undergo  that  which  they  are  striving  to  avoid  are 
improper  and  wrong,  and  are,  they  and  their 


UNIVERSAL  ETHICS  293 

authors,  called  bad.  Kindness,  courtesy,  justice, 
mercy,  generosity,  sympathy,  love,  and  the  like,  are 
good,  and  selfishness,  cruelty,  deceit,  pillage,  in- 
justice, and  murder,  are  bad,  because  they  are 
respectively  the  promoters  and  destroyers  of  well- 
being  and  happiness  in  the  world. 

But  these  two  kinds  of  conduct  produce  the 
same  respective  effects  upon  non-human  beings  as 
they  do  upon  human  beings.  The  emotion  of  a 
mangled  sensory — is  it  not  the  same  terrible  thing 
whether  the  sensory  hang  to  the  brain  of  a  quad- 
ruped or  a  man  ?  Do  shelter  and  food  not  affect 
shivering  and  empty  cattle,  horses,  and  fowls, 
precisely  as  they  do  human  beings?  Thunder 
harsh  words  at  your  dog.  Will  he  not  shrink 
and  suffer,  just  as  your  child  or  hired  hand  will 
under  like  acts  of  terrorisation  ?  Speak  kindly  to 
him,  love  him,  and  accord  to  him  a  quarter  of  the 
consideration  you  claim  for  yourself.  Is  he  not 
caused  to  be  one  of  the  happiest  and  most  devoted 
of  associates  ?  To  take  squirrels  or  song-birds, 
the  most  active  of  animals,  and  shut  them  up  in 
narrow  cages,  and  keep  them  there  shut  off  from 
their  companions  and  their  own  green  world  their 
whole  lives  long;  to  take  an  animal  as  sensitive 
and  high-minded  as  the  horse  and  put  a  pack  on 
his  back  and  a  bit  in  his  mouth,  and  then  strike 
him  dozens  of  times  a  day  with  a  lash  whose  touch 
is  like  fire ;  to  shoot  off  the  legs  and  wings  of  birds 
and  fill  their  vitals  with  lead,  and  leave  them  to 
flounder  out  a  lingering  death  in  the  reeds  and 
grasses — do  these  things  not  cause  misery  and 


294  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

desolation  in  the  world  ?  To  place  temptations  in 
the  way  of  fur-bearing  animals  and  induce  them 
to  enter  carefully  concealed  traps,  and  then  allow 
them  to  remain  in  the  villainous  clutches  of  these 
devices,  not  minutes,  but  hours,  perhaps  days, 
until  it  suits  the  convenience  of  the  ensnarer  to 
knock  out  their  brains,  or  until,  crazed  by  pain, 
the  poor  wretches  eat  off  their  own  limbs  and 
escape — is  not  this  a  monstrous  thing  to  do  ? 

Oh  that  men  everywhere  were  moved  by  the 
deep  tenderness  and  the  all-embracing  sympathy 
of  poor  Robert  Burns,  who  could  apologise  with 
real  feeling  to  a  frightened  field-mouse  whom  he 
had  accidentally  upturned  with  his  plough. 

*  Wee,  sleekit,  cow'rin',  tim'rous  beastie, 
O,  what  a  panic's  in  thy  breastie  I 
Thou  needna  start  awa'  sae  hasty, 

Wi'  bick'ring  brattle  ! 
I  wad  be  laith  to  rin  and  chase  thee, 
Wi'  murd'rous  pattle  1 

M'm  truly  sorry  man's  dominion 
Has  broken  nature's  social  union, 
And  justifies  that  511  opinion 

Which  makes  th  e  startle 
At  me,  thy  poor,  earth-born  companion, 

And  fellow-mortal.' 

Long  ago  it  was  said,  and  truthfully,  that  the 
merciful  man  is  merciful  to  his  ox,.  The  truly 
kind  man,  the  truly  honest  and  the  truly  humane 
man,  is  not  kind  and  honest  and  humane  to  men 
only,  but  to  all  beings — to  the  humble  and  lowly 
as  well  as  to  the  proud  and  powerful — to  all  that 
have  the  misfortune  to  feel  and  mourn-  Benevolence 


UNIVERSAL  ETHICS  295 

is  the  same  beautiful  thing  whether  it  pour  sun- 
shine into  the  dark  and  saddened  souls  of  men  or 
into  the  dark  and  saddened  souls  of  other  beings. 
John  Howard  never  hearkened  to  a  nobler  duty 
when  he  lifted  the  darkness  that  hung  over  English 
gaols  than  will  some  inflamed  soul  some  day  who 
hears  the  cry  of  the  lonely  captives  who  to-day 
languish  in  menagerial  dungeons  to  satisfy  human 
curiosity.  He  who  will  emancipate  horses  from 
the  hell  in  which  they  pass  their  lives — make 
them  the  associates  of  men  instead  of  their  slaves 
— will  deserve  to  stand  in  the  constellation  of  the 
world's  redeemers  beside  Garrison  and  Garibaldi. 
Is  there  he  who  holds  in  his  heart-cups  the  love 
and  compassion  of  Buddha  ?  Let  him  go  where 
the  dagger  drips  and  the  heartless  pole-axe  crashes, 
and  the  meek-eyed  millions  of  the  meadows  pour 
out  their  innocent  existences  in  the  soulless  houses 
of  slaughter.  Let  him  lift  from  off  the  races  the 
hounding  incubus  of  fear,  give  back  to  them  their 
birthright — the  right  to  a  free,  unhunted  life — and 
make  the  great  monster  (man)  to  be  their  high- 
priest  and  friend. 

'Among  the  noblest  in  the  land, 
Though  he  may  count  himself  the  least. 
That  man  I  honour  and  revere 
Who,  without  favour,  without  fear, 
In  the  great  city  dares  to  stand 
The  friend  of  every  friendless  beast, 
And  tames  with  his  unflinching  hand 
The  brutes  that  wear  our  form  and  face, 
The  were-wolves  of  the  human  race.' 


296  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

If  to  do  good  is  to  generate  welfare,  then  to 
cause  welfare  to  a  horse,  a  bird,  a  butterfly,  or  a 
fish,  is  to  do  good  just  as  truly  as  to  cause  welfare 
to  men.  And  if  to  do  evil  is  to  cause  unhappiness 
and  illfare,  then  to  cause  these  things  to  one 
individual  or  race  is  evil  just  as  certainly  as  to 
cause  them  to  any  other  individual  or  race.  And 
if  to  put  one's  self  in  the  place  of  others,  and  to 
act  toward  them  as  one  would  wish  them  to  act 
toward  him,  is  the  one  great  rule — the  Golden 
Rule — by  which  men  are  to  gauge  their  conduct 
when  acting  toward  each  other,  then  this  is  also 
the  one  great  rule — the  Golden  Rule — by  which 
men  are  to  regulate  their  conduct  toward  all 
beings.  There  is  no  escape  from  these  conclusions, 
except  for  the  savage  and  the  fool.* 

IX.  The  Psychology  of  Altruism. 

The  growth  of  altruism  in  the  world  has  been 
largely  cotemporaneous  with  the  growth  of  the 
power  of  sympathy.  Sympathy  is  the  emotion  a 

*  The  deliberate  causing  of  misery  and  death  to  criminals, 
whether  they  be  human  or  non-human  beings,  individuals  or 
species,  is  not,  as  is  sometimes  supposed,  a  violation  or 
reversal  of  the  general  theory  of  ethics.  When  they  are 
prompted  by  a  spirit  of  tenderness  and  universal  goodness 
rather  than  by  a  spirit  of  revenge,  penalties  are  justifiable  by 
the  everyday  assumption  that  it  is  sometimes  wise  to  inflict 
or  undergo  a  cert;  'n  amount  of  illfare  in  order  to  avoid  or 
forestall  a  larger  ?.„  ount  The  problems  of  universal  penology 
are  not  different  from  those  of  human  penology,  practically 
the  same  cases  and  perplexities  being  presented  by  all  delin- 
quents. See  '  Better- World  Philosophy,'  by  the  author, 
pp.  218-227,  for  a  discussion  of  the  function  of  punishment. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM    297 

being  has  when  by  means  of  his  imagination  he 
gets  so  actually  into  the  place  of  another  that  his 
own  feelings  duplicate  more  or  less  the  feelings 
of  that  other.  It  is  the  ability  or  the  impulse  to 
weep  with  those  who  weep,  and  rejoice  with  those 
who  are  glad.  Sympathy  is  the  substance  and 
the  only  sure  basis  of  morality — the  only  tie  of 
sincere  and  lasting  mutualism.  Men  have  always 
been  to  a  considerable  extent,  and  are  yet,  dis- 
posed to  think  about  and  act  toward  each  other 
from  motives  of  mutual  fear  or  advantage.  But 
such  motives  are  not  the  highest  nor  the  most 
reliable  bonds  of  fellowship  and  unity.  True 
altruism  and  solidarity — true  expansion  and  uni- 
versalisation  of  the  self — are  found  in  sympathy. 
It  is  impossible  for  one  individual  to  do  in  his 
heart  to  another  as  he  would  that  another  should 
do  to  him,  unless  he  is  at  all  times  able  and 
willing  to  get  into  the  place  of  that  other,  and  to 
realise  in  his  own  consciousness  the  results  to  the 
other  of  his  acts.  It  is  only  when  there  is  such  an 
intertwining  of  the  consciousnesses  that  the  joys 
and  sorrows  of  each  individual  consist  to  a  greater 
or  less  extent  of  the  reflexes  of  the  joys  and 
sorrows  around  him  that  there  exists  true  social 
oneness.  The  great  task  of  reforming  the  universe 
is,  therefore,  since  the  world  is  so  steeped  in 
selfishness  and  hate,  the  task  of  endowing  beings, 
or  the  task  of  stocking  the  universe  with  beings, 
with  dispositions  to  get  out  of  themselves.  If  the 
far-away  first  parents  of  men  and  women  had 
been  broad-minded  beings  instead  of  narrow — had 


298  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

been  beings  whose  most  natural  impulse  was  to  be 
kind  to  others,  and  whose  sympathies  were  as 
far-reaching  as  feeling — terrestrial  life  would  not 
to-day  present  to  the  all-seeing  understanding  the 
disheartening  spectacle  it  does  present,  and  the 
long  struggle  for  justice  and  amelioration  would 
not  have  been. 

The  primary  fact  prompting  and  underlying  the 
exploitation  of  one  being  or  set  of  beings  by 
another  is,  and  has  always  been,  Selfishness. 
Whenever  and  wherever  one  people  have  ex- 
ploited another — whether  the  exploiters  have  been 
savages,  Jews,  Romans,  Caucasians,  or  men — 
they  have  done  so  primarily  because  the  act  of 
exploitation  was  a  convenience  and  pleasure  to 
them  and  in  harmony  with  their  natures.  This 
selfishness,  in  the  case  of  civilised  peoples,  has 
been  acquired  by  them  through  inheritance  from 
the  savage  tribes  from  whom  they  have  severally 
evolved;  and  the  selfishness  of  the  savage  is  a 
legacy  from  the  animal  forms  from  whom  the 
savage  has  come.  Human  selfishness  is  simply 
an  eddy  of  an  impulse  that  is  universal — an  im- 
pulse that  has  been  implanted  in  the  nature  of  the 
life-process  of  the  earth  by  the  manner  in  which 
life  has  been  evolved. 

But  there  is  another  fact  which  has  generally, 
if  not  always,  contributed  to  every  act  of  exploita- 
tion in  this  world,  and  that  is  Ignorance—  ignorance 
on  the  part  of  those  who  have  executed  the  ex- 
ploitation :  not  ignorance  of  grammar  or  geography 
or  any  other  particular  branch  of  human  informa- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM    299 

tion  or  philosophy,  but  ignorance  regarding  those 
upon  whom  they  have  worked  their  will — uncon- 
sciousness on  the  part  of  the  exploiters  of  the 
similarity  which  actually  existed  between  them- 
selves and  their  victims.  However  free  an  indi- 
vidual may  be  from  naturally  selfish  impulses,  he 
will  never  act  in  an  altruistic  manner  towaid 
others  unless  he  is  able  to  realise  that  these  others, 
are  similar  to  himself,  and  that  acts  toward  them 
produce  results  of  good  and  evil,  of  welfare  and 
suffering,  similar  to  what  these  same  acts  produce 
when  done  to  himself.  Altruistic  conduct  implies 
not  only  altruistic  impulses,  but  altruistic  con- 
ceptions as  well.  Tyrants  hold,  and  have  always 
held,  themselves  to  be  an  entirely  different  order 
of  beings  from  their  subjects,  and  far  more  deserv- 
ing. Read  history — it  is  a  tale  told  over  and  over. 
Between  those  who  have  ruled  and  those  who 
have  served — between  the  Ends  and  the  Means — 
has  ever  yawned  a  chasm,  wide,  deep,  and  im- 
passable. The  exploited  have  always  been,  ac- 
cording to  their  masters,  a  fibrous  set,  unfavoured 
and  unthought  of  by  the  gods,  endowed  with  little 
feeling  or  intelligence,  and  brought  into  existence 
more  or  less  expressly  as  adjuncts  to  their  masters. 
This  is  the  theory  of  the  savage,  and  it  is  the 
theory  of  all  those  who  have  inherited  his  narrow 
and  unfeeling  philosophy.  The  Gentile  had  no 
rights  because  he  was  a  '  pagan.'  He  was  a 
human  being,  it  is  true,  and  had  come  forth  from 
the  womb  of  woman,  just  as  the  Jew  had.  But 
he  spoke  a  different  language  from  the  Jews,  had 


300  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

his  own  ways  of  life,  belonged  to  a  different  order 
of  things,  and  was  irritatingly  unconcerned  about 
the  gods  and  traditions  of  the  'chosen  people.' 
The  Gaul  had  no  rights  that  were  inconvenient  to 
Romans,  because  he  was  a  '  barbarian.'  The  fact 
that  he  had  blood,  and  brains,  and  nerves,  and 
love  of  life,  and  ambitions,  and  that  he  suffered 
when  he  was  subjected  to  humiliation,  hard  treat- 
ment, and  death,  just  as  Romans  did,  was  never 
really  thought  of  by  the  arrogant  and  reckless 
Romans.  Romans  never  realised  in  their  minds 
what  it  meant  for  non- Romans  to  be  treated  as 
they  were  treated ;  and  one  reason  why  they  never 
realised  it  was  because  it  was  convenient  for  them 
not  to  do  so.  To  kill  or  enslave  a  Gaul  or  German 
we  now  know,  who  are  able  to  judge  these  acts 
from  an  un- Roman  and  unprejudiced  point  of 
view,  was  practically  the  same  crime  as  to  kill  or 
enslave  a  Roman.  But  it  was  not  so  to  Romans. 
The  most  trifling  offence  against  a  Roman  citizen 
was  enough,  according  to  Roman  law,  to  condemn 
the  offender  to  execution.  But  the  most  horrible 
outrages,  when  committed  by  Romans  upon  non- 
Romans,  were  nothing.  Romans  always  thought 
and  felt  from  the  standpo-l  +  of  Romans.  They 
never  got  over  into  the  world  of  the  '  barbarians,' 
and  really  pictured  to  themselves — really  felt — the 
misfortunes  of  their  victims.  It  was  the  same 
way  with  the  black  man  in  the  eyes  of  the  white 
man  a  generation  or  two  ago ;  it  is  the  same  way 
with  the  brown  man  to-day.  The  black  man  had 
no  rights  that  were  inconvenient  for  the  white 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM    301 

man  to  respect,  because  he  was  a  'nigger,'  and 
had  no  '  soul,'  and  was  the  offspring  of  Ham. 
This  spirit  of  unconsciousness,  which  has  been 
so  prominent  throughout  the  history  of  mankind, 
still  survives  in  the  minds  of  civilised  men  and 
women  to-day,  as  is  shown  by  the  conception  (or 
misconception)  cherished  by  the  Caucasian  toward 
the  '  nigger,'  by  the  Christian  toward  the  '  heathen,' 
by  the  Moslem  toward  the  '  infidel,'  by  the  Pro- 
testant toward  the  Catholic,  and  vice  versd,  by  the 
plutocrat  toward  the  proletarian,  by  men  toward 
women,  and  by  the  human  being  toward  the 
'  animal.' 

The  psychology  of  the  exploitation  of  non- 
human  beings  by  human  beings  is  not  different  in 
kind  from  the  psychology  of  any  other  act  of 
exploitation.  The  great  first  cause  of  man's  in- 
humanity to  not-men  is  the  same  precisely  as  the 
great  first  cause  of  man's  inhumanity  to  man — 
Selfishness — blind,  brutal,  unconscionable  egoism. 
Monopolist-like  man  thinks  and  cares  only  about 
himself.  He  has  the  heart  of  the  bully — deriving 
from  the  contemplation  of  his  fiendish  supremacy 
a  sort  of  monstrous  satisfaction.  But  there  is 
also  present  in  this  case  the  same  half-sincere, 
half-fostered  nescience  as  in  all  other  cases  of 
exploitation.  The  ox,  the  hare,  the  bird,  and  the 
fish  have  no  rights  in  the  world  in  which  they 
live  other  than  those  that  are  convenient  for  men  to 
allow  to  them,  because  they  are  '  animals.'  They 
are  assumed  to  belong  to  an  order  of  beings 
entirely  different  from  that  to  which  human  beings 


302  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

belong.  They  are  filled  with  nerves,  and  brains, 
and  bloodvessels ;  they  love  life,  and  bleed,  and 
struggle,  and  cry  out  when  their  veins  are  opened, 
just  as  human  beings  do ;  they  have  the  same 
general  form  and  structure  of  body,  their  bodies  are 
composed  of  the  same  organs  busied  with  the 
same  functions ;  and  they  are  descended  from  the 
same  ancestors  and  have  been  developed  in  the 
same  world  through  the  operation  of  the  same  great 
laws  as  we  ourselves  have.  But  all  of  these  things, 
and  dozens  of  others  just  as  significant,  are  dis- 
regarded by  us  in  our  hard-hearted  determination 
to  exploit  them.  We  have  a  set  of  words  and 
phrases  which  we  use  in  speaking  of  ourselves, 
and  another  very  different  set  for  other  beings. 
The  very  same  things  are  called  by  different 
names  with  wholly  different  connotations  depend- 
ing on  whether  it  is  a  man  that  is  referred  to  or 
some  other  being.  It  is  '  murder '  to  take  the  life 
of  a  human  being,  but  to  take  the  life  of  a  sheep 
or  a  cow  is  only  '  knocking  it  on  the  head.'  A  man 
may  murder  squirrels  or  birds  all  day — that  is,  he 
may  do  that  which  when  done  to  human  beings  is 
called  murder — but  it  is  only  'sport'  when  done  to 
these  humble  inhabitants  of  the  wilds.  The  dead 
body  of  a  man  is  a  '  corpse ' ;  the  dead  body  of  a 
quadruped  is  only  a  '  carcass.'  A  race  of  horses 
or  dogs  is  a  '  breed ' ;  but  a  breed  of  men  and 
women  is  always  respectfully  referred  to  as  a  race. 
We  perpetuate  our  blindness  by  the  use  of  words. 
We  accommodate  our  consciences  by  inventing 
ways  of  looking  at  things  that  will  bring  out  our 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM    303 

own  lustre  and  relieve  us  from  the  ghastly  faces 
of  our  crimes.  For  the  human  race  to  rob  and 
kill  other  races  is  the  same  kind  of  activity  exactly 
as  it  is  for  human  beings  to  rob  and  kill  each 
other.  But  it  is  not  considered  so  to-day — except 
by  a  few  lost-caste  '  visionaries  '  scattered  here  and 
there  over  Christendom,  and  some  millions  of 
'  heathens '  in  Asia. 

A  short  time  ago  a  series  of  letters  came  into 
my  hands  written  from  Burmah  by  an  American 
missionary  in  that  country.  According  to  this 
writer,  one  of  the  greatest  obstacles  the  mission- 
aries have  to  contend  with  in  their  work  there  is 
the  hostility  aroused  in  the  people  by  the  killing 
and  flesh-eating  habits  of  the  missionaries  them- 
selves. The  native  inhabitants,  who  are  the  most 
compassionate  of  mankind,  look  upon  the  Christian 
missionaries,  who  kill  and  eat  cows  and  shoot 
monkeys  for  pastime,  as  being  little  better  than 
cannibals.  Contemplate  the  presumption  neces- 
sary to  cause  an  individual  to  leave  behind  him 
fields  white  for  mission-work,  and  travel,  at  great 
expense,  halfway  round  the  earth  in  order  to 
preach  a  narrow,  cruel,  anthropocentric  gospel  to 
a  people  of  so  great  tenderness  and  humanity  as 
to  be  kind  even  to  '  animals '  and  enemies ! 

We  human  beings  feel  at  liberty  to  commit  any 
kind  of  outrage  upon  other  races,  and  these  out- 
rages are  looked  upon  by  us  as  nothing.  But  the 
most  trifling  annoyances  of  other  races  are  deemed 
by  us  of  sufficient  consequence  to  justify  us  in 
visiting  upon  them  the  most  fearful  retributions. 


304  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

We  can  break  up  the  laboriously  built  home  of  a 
mother  mouse  in  the  rubbish-heap  of  our  back 
yard,  scatter  the  pink  babies  of  that  mother  over 
the  ground  to  die  of  cold  and  starvation,  and 
cause  the  frightened  mother  to  flee  at  the  risk  of 
her  very  life — all  to  give  to  the  terrier  and  our- 
selves a  little  moment  of  savage  pastime.  But  if 
that  same  mother,  some  hard  winter's  night,  when 
she  has  failed  in  her  search  elsewhere  for  some- 
thing to  stay  her  hunger,  comes  into  our  larder 
and  nibbles  a  bit  of  cheese  or  a  few  mouthfuls  of 
crust  from  our  pie,  although  she  takes  but  a  crumb 
in  all,  and  is  as  dainty  in  her  feeding  as  a  lady, 
we  immediately  get  out  our  traps  and  poisons  and 
storm  around  as  if  a  murder  or  some  other  irrepar- 
able wrong  had  been  committed.  We  think  of  our 
acts  toward  non-human  peoples,  when  we  think  of 
them  at  all,  entirely  from  the  human  point  of  view. 
We  never  take  the  time  to  put  ourselves  in  the 
places  of  our  victims.  We  never  take  the  trouble 
to  get  over  into  their  world,  and  realise  what  is 
happening  over  there  as  a  result  of  our  doings 
toward  them.  It  is  so  much  more  comfortable  not 
to  do  so — so  much  more  comfortable  to  be  blind  and 
deaf  and  insane.  We  go  on  quieting  our  con- 
sciences, as  best  we  can,  by  the  fact  that  every- 
body else  nearly  is  engaged  in  the  same  business 
as  we  are,  and  by  the  fact  that  so  few  ever  say 
anything  about  the  matter — anaesthetised,  as  it 
were,  by  the  universality  of  our  iniquities  and  the 
infrequency  of  disquieting  reminders. 

Many  years  ago  an  eccentric  but  gifted  English- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM     305 

man  had  a  dream  in  which  he  saw  the  fortunes  of 
the  world  reversed.  Man  was  no  longer  master, 
but  victim.  The  earth  was  ruled  by  the  birds  and 
quadrupeds,  the  mice  and  monkeys,  who  pro- 
ceeded to  inflict  upon  their  erstwhile  tyrant  the 
same  cruelties  he  had  hitherto  inflicted  upon  them. 
'Multitudes  of  human  beings  were  systematically 
fattened  for  the  carnivora.  They  were  frequently 
forwarded  to  great  distances  by  train,  in  trucks, 
without  food  or  water.  Large  numbers  of  infants 
were  constantly  boiled  down  to  form  broth 
for  invalid  animals.  In  over-populous  districts 
babies  were  given  to  malicious  young  cats  and 
dogs  to  be  taken  away  and  drowned.  Boys  were 
hunted  by  terriers  and  stoned  to  death  by  frogs. 
Mice  were  a  good  deal  occupied  in  setting  man- 
traps, baited  with  toasted  cheese,  in  poor  neigh- 
bourhoods. Gouty  old  gentlemen  were  hitched  to 
night-cabs,  and  forced  to  totter,  on  their  weak 
ankles  and  diseased  joints,  to  clubs,  where  fashion- 
able young  colts  were  picked  up,  and  taken,  at 
such  speed  as  whipcord  could  extract,  to  visit 
chestnut  fillies.  Flying  figures  in  scarlet  coats, 
buckskins,  and  top-boots  were  run  down  by  packs 
of  foxes  that  had  nothing  else  to  do.  Old  cock- 
grouse  strutted  out  for  a  morning's  sport,  and 
came  in  to  talk  of  how  many  brace  of  country 
gentlemen  they  had  bagged.  Gamekeepers  lived 
a  precarious  life  in-  holes  and  caves.  They  were 
perpetually  harried  by  game  and  vermin ;  held 
fast  in  steel  traps,  their  toes  were  nibbled  by 
stoats  and  martens ;  and  finally,  their  eyes  picked 

20 


306  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

out  by  owls  and  kites,  they  were  gibbeted  alive  on 
trees,  head  downwards,  until  the  termination  of 
their  martyrdom.  In  one  especially  tragic  case, 
a  naturalist  in  spectacles  dodged  about  painfully 
among  the  topmost  branches  of  a  wood,  while  a 
mias  underneath,  armed  with  a  gun,  inflicted  on 
him  dreadful  wounds.  A  veterinary  surgeon  of 
Alfort  was  stretched  on  his  back,  his  arms  and 
legs  secured  to  posts,  in  order  that  a  horse  might 
cut  him  up  alive  for  the  benefit  of  an  equine 
audience;  but  the  generous  steed,  incapable  of 
vindictive  feelings,  with  one  disdainful  stamp  on 
the  midriff,  crushed  the  wretch's  life  out '  (8). 

The  following  is  from  the  Chinese.  The  speaker 
is  an  ox : 

'  I  request,  good  people,  that  you  will  listen  to 
what  I  have  to  say.  In  the  whole  world  there  is  no 
distress  equal  to  that  of  the  ox.  In  spring  and  sum- 
mer, autumn  and  winter,  I  diligently  put  forth 
my  strength ;  during  the  four  seasons  there  is 
no  respite  to  my  labours.  I  drag  the  plough,  a 
thousand-pound  weight  fastened  to  my  shoulders. 
Hundreds  of  thousands  of  lashes  are,  by  a  leather 
whip,  inflicted  upon  me.  Curses  and  abuses  in  a 
thousand  forms  are  poured  upon  me.  I  am 
driven,  with  threatenings,  rapidly  along,  and  not 
allowed  to  stand  still.  Through  the  dry  ground 
or  the  deep  water  I  with  difficulty  drag  the  plough, 
with  an  empty  belly;  the  tears  flow  from  both 
my  eyes.  I  hope  in  the  morning  that  I  shall  be 
early  released,  but  I  am  detained  until  the 
evening.  If,  with  a  hungry  stomach,  I  eat  the 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM     307 

grass  in  the  middle  of  the  field,  the  whole  family, 
great  and  small,  insultingly  abuse  me.  I  am  left 
to  eat  any  species  of  herbs  among  the  hills,  but 
you,  my  master,  yourself  receive  the  grain  that  is 
sown  in  the  field.  Of  the  chen  paddy  you  make 
rice ;  of  the  no  paddy  you  make  wine.  You  have 
cotton,  wheat,  and  herbs  of  a  thousand  different 
kinds.  Your  garden  is  full  of  vegetables.  When 
your  men  and  women  marry,  amid  all  your 
felicity,  if  there  be  a  want  of  money,  you  let 
me  out  to  others.  When  pressed  for  the  payment 
of  duties,  you  devise  no  plans,  but  take  and  sell 
the  ox  that  ploughs  your  field.  When  you  see  that 
I  am  old  and  weak,  you  sell  me  to  the  butcher  to 
be  killed.  The  butcher  conducts  me  to  his  home 
and  soon  strikes  me  in  the  forehead  with  the  head 
of  an  iron  hatchet,  after  which  I  am  left  to  die  in 
the  utmost  distress.  My  skin  is  peeled  off,  my 
bones  are  scraped,  and  my  skin  is  taken  to  cover 
the  drum  by  which  the  country  is  alarmed.' 

1  Witness  the  patient  ox,  with  stripes  and  yells 
Driven  to  the  slaughter,  goaded  as  he  runs 
To  madness,  while  the  savage  at  his  heels 
Laughs  at  the  frantic  sufferer's  fury.' 

The  angler  brags  about  his  '  haul '  and  the 
hunter  about  his  '  bag '  and  his  '  big  game  '  with 
as  little  realisation  of  what  these  things  mean  as 
the  slave-master  boasts  of  his  '  niggers.'  Men 
talk  of  '  chops '  and  '  steaks  '  and  '  roasts  '  with 
the  same  somnambulism,  the  same  profound  un- 
consciousness of  what  these  things  really  signify 
in  the  psychic  economies  of  the  world,  as  the 

20 — 2 


308  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

conqueror  contemplates  his  '  captives,'  the  robber 
his  '  spoil,'  or  the  savage  his  '  scalps.'  If  before 
the  eyes  and  in  the  mind  of  each  individual  who 
sits  unconcernedly  down  to  a  parsleyed  '  steak ' 
could  rise  the  facts  in  the  biography  of  that 
'  steak ' — the  happy  heifer  on  the  far  western 
meadows,  the  fateful  day  when  she  is  forced  by 
the  drover's  whip  from  her  home,*  the  arduous 
'drive*  to  the  village  and  her  baffled  efforts  to 
escape,  the  crowding  into  cars  and  the  long, 
painful  journey,  the  silent  heartaches  and  the 
low,  pitiful  moans,  the  terrible  hunger  and  thirst 
and  cold,  her  arrival,  bruised  and  bewildered,  in 
the  city,  her  dazed  mingling  with  others,  the  great 
murder-house,  the  prods  and  bellowings,  the 
treacherous  crash  of  the  brain-axe,  the  death  drop 
and  shudder,  the  butcher's  knife,  the  gush  of  blood 
from  her  pretty  throat,  and  the  glassy  gaze  of  her 
dead  but  beautiful  eyes — there  would  be,  in  spite  of 
the  inherent  hardness  of  the  human  heart,  a  great 
drawing  back  from  those  acts  which  render  such 
fearful  things  necessary.  If  human  beings  could 
only  realise  what  the  hare  suffers,  or  the  stag,  when 
it  is  pursued  by  dogs,  horses,  and  men  bent  on 
taking  its  life,  or  what  the  fish  feels  when  it  is 
thrust  through  and  flung  into  suffocating  gases, 

*  I  have  many  times  seen  cows  chased  all  over  their  native 
premises,  round  and  round,  through  fields  and  barnyards, 
across  streams  and  over  fences — chased  until  the  poor  things 
were  utterly  exhausted,  and  whipped  and  beaten  until  their 
faces  and  backs  were  covered  with  wounds — before  they 
could  be  compelled  to  leave  for  ever  the  old  farm  where  they 
had  been  born  and  raised. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM     309 

no  one  of  them,  not  even  the  most  recreant,  could 
find  pleasure  in  such  work.  How  painful  to  a 
person  of  tenderness  and  enlightenment  is  even 
the  thought  of  rabbit-shootings,  duck-slaughterings, 
bear-hunts,  quail-killing  expeditions,  tame  pigeon 
massacres,  and  the  like !  And  yet  with  what 
light-hearted  enthusiasm  the  mindless  ruffians  who 
do  these  atrocious  things  enter  upon  them  !  One 
would  think  that  grown  men  would  be  ashamed 
to  arm  themselves  and  go  out  with  horses  and 
hounds  and  engage  in  such  babyish  and  unequal 
contests  as  sportsmen  usually  rely  on  for  their 
peculiar  'glory.'  And  they  would  be  if  grown 
men  were  not  so  often  simply  able-bodied  bullies. 
//  human  beings  could  only  realise  what  it  means  to 
live  in  a  world  and  associate  day  after  day  with  other 
beings  wore  intelligent  and  powerful  than  themselves, 
and  yet  be  regarded  by  these  more  intelligent  indi- 
viduals simply  as  merchandise  to  be  bought  and  sold, 
or  as  targets  to  be  shot  at,  they  would  hide  their  guilty 
heads  in  shame  and  horror. 

The  Being  from  whose  breaking  heart  gushed 
these  lines  of  sorrow  and  sympathy  on  seeing  a 
wounded  hare  was  a  god : 

'  Inhuman  man  1  curse  on  thy  barbarous  art, 
And  blasted  be  thy  murder-aiming  eye : 
May  never  pity  soothe  thee  with  a  sigh, 
Nor  ever  pleasure  glad  thy  cruel  heart  1 

'  Go,  live,  poor  wanderer  of  the  wood  and  fiek 
The  bitter  little  that  of  life  remains  ; 
No  more  the  thickening  brakes  and  verdant  plaint 
To  thee  shall  home,  or  food,  OT  pastime  yield. 


310  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

*  Seek,  mangled  one,  some  place  of  wonted  rest, 
No  more  of  rest,  but  now  thy  dying  bed  ; 
The  sheltering  rushes  whistling  o'er  thy  head, 
The  cold  earth  with  thy  bloody  bosom  pressed. 

'  Oft,  as  by  winding  Nith  I,  musing,  wait 
The  sober  eve  or  hail  the  cheerful  dawn, 
I'll  miss  thee  sporting  o'er  the  dewy  lawn, 
And  curse  the  ruffian's  aim  and  mourn  thy  hapless  fate.' 

We  human  beings,  in  our  conduct  toward  the 
races  of  beings  associated  with  us  on  this  planet, 
are  almost  pure  savages.  We  are  not  even  half 
civilised.  And  this  fact  is  certain  to  bring  upon 
us  the  criticism  and  condemnation  of  the  more 
enlightened  generations  to  come.  The  fact  is 
apparent  to-day,  however — just  as  apparent  as  the 
barbarity  of  the  Romans — to  everyone  who  will 
take  the  trouble  to  rid  himself  of  the  prejudices 
which  enslave  and  blind  him,  and  view  human 
phenomena  from  an  un-huinan,  extra-terrestrial 
point  of  view. 

To  most  persons — to  all  except  to  a  few — every- 
thing is  simply  a  matter  of  habit  and  education. 
And  a  majority  of  persons,  too,  can  become 
educated  to  one  thing  about  as  easily  and  com- 
pletely as  they  can  to  another.  In  Mr.  Huxley's 
'Man's  Place  in  Nature*  there  is  reprinted  from 
an  old  volume  the  picture  of  a  butcher's  shop  as 
it  is  said  to  have  existed  among  the  savage  Antiques 
of  Africa  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Mr.  Huxley 
says  that  the  original  engraving  claims  to  represent 
an  actual  fact,  and  that  he  has  himself  no  doubt 
but  it  does  really  stand  for  just  what  it  purports  to 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM     311 

represent,  especially  since  the  fact  has  been  cor- 
roborated by  Du  Chaillu  in  comparatively  recent 
times.  The  fact  for  which  this  old  picture  stands 
is  a  good  illustration  of  the  power  of  custom  in 
shaping  human  ideas.  In  this  savage  '  market ' 
pretty  much  the  same  line  of  goods  appears  as  is 
found  in  modern  '  markets,'  except  that,  instead 
of  the  quartered  corpses  of  sheep  and  bullocks, 
there  hang  the  shoulders,  thighs,  and  gory  heads 
of  men.  The  butcher  is  represented  as  standing 
beside  the  chopping-block  in  the  act  of  cutting  up 
the  leg  of  a  man.  A  child's  head  and  other 
fragments  of  the  human  body  are  piled  up  on 
another  block,  and  behind  these  on  pegs  are 
ranged  the  more  pretentious  wares  of  the  establish- 
ment. 4  Presently  we  passed  a  woman,'  says  Du 
Chaillu,  in  speaking  of  the  cannibalism  of  the 
Fans,  who  were  probably  identical  with  those 
referred  to  two  centuries  earlier  as  Antiques. 
'  She  bore  with  her  a  piece  of  the  thigh  of  a 
human  body,  just  as  we  should  go  to  market  and 
carry  thence  a  roast  of  steak.'  We  can  easily 
imagine  (by  the  help  of  the  sights  we  see  every 
day)  the  anthropophagous  crowd  standing  around 
giving  their  early  morning  orders,  and  the  enter- 
prising assassin  hustling  about  to  wait  on  them. 
One  of  them  wants  an  arm,  another  wants  a  leg, 
another  a  liver,  another  a  half-dozen  nice  fat  ribs. 
One  fellow  wants  a  tender  '  cut '  of  young  girl's 
sirloin,  and  another  would  like  an  old  man's  calf 
for  soup.  A  little  naked  urchin,  who  has  had  to 
wait  a  long  time  in  order  to  get  a  chance  to  buy 


312  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

anything  at  all,  exchanges  a  few  shells  for  a 
section  of  human  bologna.  One  fellow  wants  to 
know  the  price  of  the  boy's  head  which  lies  on  the 
neighbouring  block,  and  a  woman  complains  that 
the  baby's  brains  which  she  bought  the  day  before, 
and  which  were  recommended  as  being  especially 
'  fresh  and  nice,'  turned  out  to  be  '  bad.'  We  can 
see  them  go  home  with  their  gruesome  purchases, 
cook  them,  and  sit  down  and  eat  them,  discussing 
their  flavour  or  their  lack  of  it,  and  remarking  their 
tenderness,  toughness,  or  juiciness,  and  finally 
throwing  the  bones  out  to  the  dogs — all  with  as 
little  thought  of  the  immorality  of  it  as  '  Thanks- 
giving '  gluttons  have  to-day  at  their  feasts  of 
blood.  There  may  have  been  an  occasional 
'  visionary '  among  these  people  fanatical  enough  tc 
'  refuse  to  eat  meat,'  or  even  to  protest  against  the 
practice.  Probably  there  was.  There  generally 
are  a  few  such  discordants  in  every  generation  of 
vipers.  But  '  fanatics '  in  those  days  were  in  all 
likelihood,  as  they  are  to-day,  too  few  to  be 
troublesome. 

To  anyone  familiar  with  the  pliability  of  the 
human  conscience,  or  with  the  soundness  and 
depth  of  intellectual  sleep,  these  things  are  neither 
impossible  nor  strange.  There  is  so  little  looking 
into  the  essence  of  things,  so  little  •  looking  at 
things  as  they  are,  and  so  much  thinking  and 
doing  as  we  are  accustomed  or  told  to  think  and  do 
— there  are,  in  fact,  so  few  who  can  really  think 
at  all — that  if  we  had  been  accustomed  and  taught 
to  do  so  from  childhood,  and  the  world  were 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  ALTRUISM     313 

practically  unanimous  in  its  conduct  and  teach- 
ings on  the  matter,  very  few  of  us  indeed  w  uld 
not  sit  down  to  a  breakfast  of  scrambled  infant's 
brains,  a  luncheon  of  cold  boiled  aunt,  or  a  dinner 
of  roast  uncle,  with  as  little  compunction,  perhaps 
with  the  same  horrible  merriment,  as  we  to-day 
attend  a  '  barbecue  '  or  a  '  turkey.'  Why  should 
we  not  make  hash  and  sausages  out  of  our  broken- 
down  grandfathers  and  grandmothers  just  as  we 
do  out  of  our  worn-out  horses,  and  help  out  tlje 
pigeons  at  our  killing  carnivals  with  a  few  live 
peasants  ?  How  much  more  artistic  and  civilised 
to  pile  our  tables  on  holy  days  with  the  gold  and 
crimson  of  the  fields  and  orchards  than  to  load 
them  with  the  dead !  And  yet  how  strangely  few 
are  mature  enough  to  care  anything  at  all  about 
the  matter ! 

Oh,  the  helplessness  and  irresponsibility  of  the 
human  mind  1  There  is  no  spontaneity,  no  origin- 
ality, only  the  dead  level  of  the  machine.  How  im- 
possible it  is  for  us  to  think,  to  discover  anything 
unassisted,  to  perceive  anything  after  it  has  been 
pointed  out  to  us  even,  if  it  is  a  little  different 
from  what  we  are  used  to  I  This,  it  seems  to  me, 
is  one  of  the  most  pathetic  things  in  all  this  world 
— this  illimitable  impotence,  this  powerlessness 
to  inspect  things  from  any  other  point  of  view 
than  the  one  we  inherit  when  we  come  into  the 
world ;  t  be  a  knave  or  lunatic  (or  the  next  thing 
to  it),  and  never  have  the  slightest  suspicion  of 
the  fact.  The  human  mind  will  cer^cinly  not 
always  be  this  way.  It  will  surely  be  different 


314  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

some  time.  It  seems  incredible  that  the  planet 
will  drag  along  in  disgrace  this  way  forever.  The 
men  of  Europe  and  America  are  not  so  primitive 
as  the  jtmglemen,  and  the  junglemen  are  superior 
in  some  respects  to  the  quadrupeds  and  reptiles, 
and  this  gives  reason  for  a  little  hope.  But  when, 
that  is  the  question,  when  will  it  be?  In  what 
distant  time  will  the  Golden  Dream  of  our  prophetic 
hours  come  to  this  poor  darkened  larva  of  a  world  ? 
Ages  upon  ages  after  our  little  existences  have 
gone  out,  and  the  detritus  of  our  wasted  bodies 
has  wandered  long  in  the  labyrinths  of  the  sod 
or  been  sown  by  aimless  gusts  over  our  native 
hills. 

X.  Anthropocentric  Ethics. 

Anthropocentricism,  which  drifted  down  as  a 
tradition  from  ancient  times,  and  which  for  cen- 
turies shaped  the  theories  of  the  Western  world, 
but  whose  respectability  among  thinking  people 
has  now  nearly  passed  away,  was,  perhaps,  the 
boldest  and  most  revolting  expression  of  human 
provincialism  and  conceit  ever  formulated  by  any 
people.  It  was  the  doctrine  that  man  was  the 
centre  about  whom  revolved  all  facts  and  interests 
whatsoever;  and  Judaism  and  its  two  children, 
Christianity  and  Mahometanism,  were  responsible 
for  it.  Everything,  according  to  this  conception, 
was  interpreted  in  terms  of  human  utility.  Every- 
thing was  made  for  man — including  women.  The 
sun  and  moon  were  luminaries,  not  worlds,  hung 
there  by  the  fatherly  manufacturer  of  things  for 


ANTHROPOCENTRIC  ETHICS      315 

the  convenience  and  delight  of  his  children.  The 
stars  were  perforations  in  the  overarching  concave 
through  which  eavesdropping  prophets  peered  into 
celestial  secrets,  and  errand-angels  came  and  went 
with  messages  between  gods  and  men.  Not  only 
the  spheres  in  space,  but  the  earth  and  all  it 
contained — the  rivers,  seas,  and  seasons,  all  the 
plants  that  grow,  and  all  the  flowers  that  blow, 
and  all  the  millions  that  swim  and  suffer  in  the 
waters  and  skies — were,  according  to  this  remorse- 
less notion,  the  soulless  adjuncts  of  man.  In- 
trinsically they  were  meaningless.  They  had  sig- 
nificance only  as  they  served  the  human  species. 
The  hues  and  perfumes  of  flowers,  the  songs  of 
birds,  the  dews,  the  breezes,  the  rains,  the  rocks, 
the  '  beasts  of  the  field  and  the  fowls  of  the  air,' 
the  great  forests,  the  mighty  mountains,  the 
fearful  solitudes,  even  famine  and  pestilence,  were 
all  made  for  the  being  with  the  reinless  imagination. 
Luther  believed  that  the  fly — festive  little  Musca 
domestica,  who  inhabits  our  homes,  and  sometimes 
unwittingly  wanders  over  our  tender  places — was 
a  pestiferous  invention  of  the  devil,  maliciously 
sent  to  annoy  him  in  his  meditations.  Garlic 
grew  on  the  swamp  brim  as  a  handy  antidote  for 
human  malaria.  Fruits  ripened  in  the  summer- 
time because  the  acids  and  juices  which  they 
contained  were  believed  to  be  necessary  for  man's 
health  and  refreshment.  The  great  muscles  of 
the  ox  were  made  to  provide  men  with  delicacies 
and  leisure.  The  cloak  of  the  ewe  was  made 
without  any  special  thought,  or  without  any 


3i6  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

thought  at  all,  of  the  comforts  of  the  ewe.  It 
was  placed  there  on  the  ewe  by  an  all-tender 
creator,  to  be  torn  by  his  images  from  her 
bleeding  back  and  worn.  The  fossil  forms  found 
in  the  rocks  were  not  the  bond  fide  remains  of 
creatures  that  had  lived  and  perished  when  the 
calcareous  foundations  of  the  continents  were 
forming  in  ancient  sea-beds.  They  were  counter- 
feits, slyly  designed  by  a  suspicious  providence, 
and  sandwiched  among  the  strata  '  to  test  human 
faith.'  The  rainbow  was  a  phenomenon  with 
which  the  laws  of  reflection  and  refraction  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do.  It  was  a  sign  or  seal 
stamped  on  the  retreating  storms  as  a  pledge  that 
submersion  would  not  be  again  used  as  a  punish- 
ment for  sinners.  The  universal  ruler  was  con- 
ceived to  be  an  individual  of  transcendent  power 
and  respectability,  but  was  supposed  to  spend 
the  most  of  his  time  and  a  good  deal  of  anxiety 
on  the  regulation  and  repair  of  his  illustrious 
likenesses. 

The  history  of  intellectual  evolution  is  the 
history  of  disillusionment.  The  stars,  we  now 
know,  are  not  hatchways,  but  worlds.  They  burn 
because  they  are  fire.  They  blaze  and  circle  in 
obedience  to  their  own  unchangeable  inertias,  just 
as  the  earth  does.  They  blazed  and  wheeled  when 
the  elemental  matters  of  the  earth  mingled  indis- 
tinguishably  with  the  vapours  of  the  sun,  and  they 
will  blaze  and  wheel  when  the  last  inhabitant  of 
this  clod  has  dissolved  into  the  everlasting  atoms. 
The  earth  is  Dot  the  capital  of  cosmos  nor  the 


ANTHROPOCENTRIC  ETHICS      317 

subject  of  celestial  anxiety.  The  earth  is  a  satrap 
of  the  sun — a  subordinate  among  servants,  not  a 
sovereign  with  a  retinue  of  stars.  The  earth  and 
its  contents  were  not  made  for  man.  They  were 
not  made  at  all.  They  were  evolved.  The  con- 
caves of  the  sea  have  been  hollowed,  the  mountains 
upheaved,  and  the  continents  planted  and  peopled, 
by  the  same  tendencies  as  those  that  hold  the 
universes  in  their  grasp.  The  primal  matters  of 
the  earth  came  out  of  the  substance  of  the  sun, 
and  by  the  play  and  activity  of  these  elements  and 
the  play  and  activity  of  their  derivatives  were 
evolved  all  the  multitudinous  forms  of  land,  fluid, 
plant,  animal,  and  society.  The  flowers  that 
'  blush  unseen '  do  not  necessarily  '  waste  their 
sweetness  on  the  desert  air,'  as  the  poet  so  melo- 
diously imagines.  The  colours  and  scents  of 
flowers  serve  their  purposes — which  are  to  secure 
the  services  of  insects  in  fertilisation — quite  as 
well  when  unperceived,  as  when  perceived  by 
human  senses.  The  non-human  races  of  beings 
were  not  made  for  human  beings.  They  were 
evolved — the  higher  forms  from  the  lower  forms, 
and  the  lower  forms  from  still  lower — just  as 
the  higher  societies  of  men  have  been  evolved, 
under  the  eye  of  history,  out  of  barbarism  and 
savagery.  They  are  our  ancestors.  They  have 
made  human  life  and  civilisation  possible.  They 
made  their  homes  on  primeval  land  patches  when 
the  continents  we  creep  over  were  sleeping  in 
the  seas.  They  lived  and  loved  and  suffered  and 
died  in  order  that  a  being  intelligent  enough  to 


3i8  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

analyse  himself  and  recreant  enough  to  pick  their 
bones  might  come  into  the  world. 

There  are  supposed  to  be  something  like  a 
million  (maybe  there  are  several  million)  species 
of  inhabitants  living  on  the  earth.  The  human 
species  is  one  of  these.  Not  more  than  a  few 
thousand  of  these  species  are  seriously  advan- 
tageous to  men.  The  harmful  and  useless  species 
are  many  times  more  numerous  than  the  helpful. 
Now,  if  the  999,999  non-human  species  were  made 
for  the  human  species,  why  were  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  species  made  that  are  of  no  possible 
human  importance,  and  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  other  species  that  are  a  positive  injury  ?  And 
if  by  some  miraculous  stretch  of  imagination  the 
999,999  species  now  living  on  the  earth  are  con- 
ceived to  have  been  made  for  man,  why  were  the 
10,000,000  or  15,000,000  of  species  made  that  lived 
and  passed  away  before  there  was  a  human  being 
in  existence.  Perhaps  the  traditionist  will  say — 
accustomed  as  he  is  to  treat  syllogisms  with  con- 
tempt— that  they  were  made  to  invigorate  human 
'faith.' 

If  the  age  of  the  human  species  be  estimated  at 
50,000  years  and  the  age  of  the  life-process  at 
100,000,000  years,  the  time  during  which  man 
has  been  on  the  earth  is,  when  compared  with 
the  entire  period  during  which  the  planet  has 
been  tenanted,  as  I  to  2,000.  And  the  time 
during  which  the  earth  has  been  inhabited  — 
immense  as  that  time  is  when  compared  with  the 
little  span  of  human  history — is  also  insignificant 


ANTHROPOCENTRIC  ETHICS      319 

when  compared  with  the  enormous  lapse  of  time 
during  which  the  planet  was  slowly  cooling  and 
solidifying  preliminary  to  the  existence  of  life. 
And  the  entire  life  of  the  planet — inconceivably 
vast  as  it  is — is  as  nothing  compared  with  that 
eternity,  that  duration  without  beginning  or  close, 
during  which  the  sidereal  millions  have  undergone, 
and  are  destined  to  continue  to  undergo,  their 
countless  and  immeasurable  transformations. 

It  is  about  as  profound  to  suppose  that  the 
earth  and  its  contents,  and  the  suns,  stars,  and 
systems  of  space,  were  all  made  for  a  single  species 
inhabitating  an  obscure  ball  located  in  a  remote 
quarter  of  the  universe  as  it  is  to  suppose  that  the 
gigantic  body  of  the  elephant  was  made  for  the 
wisp  of  hair  on  the  tip  of  its  tail.  Man  is  not  the 
end,  he  is  but  an  incident,  of  the  infinite  elabora- 
tions of  Time  and  Space. 

XL  Ethical  Implications  of  Evolution. 

The  doctrine  of  organic  evolution,  which  forever 
established  the  common  genesis  of  all  animals, 
sealed  the  doom  of  anthropocentricism.  What- 
ever the  inhabitants  of  this  world  were  or  were 
thought  to  be  before  the  publication  of  '  The 
Origin  of  Species,'  they  never  could  be  anything 
since  then  but  a.  family.  The  doctrine  of  evolution 
is  probably  the  most  important  revelation  that 
has  come  to  the  world  since  the  illuminations  of 
Galileo  and  Copernicus.  The  authors  of  the 
Copernican  theory  enlarged  and  corrected  human 
understanding  by  disclosing  to  man  the  comparm- 


320  .        THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

tive  littleness  of  his  world — by  discovering  that 
the  earth,  which  had  up  to  that  time  been  sup- 
posed to  be  the  centre  and  capital  of  cosmos,  is 
in  reality  a  satellite  of  the  sun.  This  heliocentric 
discovery  was  hard  on  human  conceit,  for  it  was  the 
first  broad  hint  man  had  thus  far^Teceived  of  his  true 
dimensions.  The  doctrine  of  evolution  has  had, 
and  is  having,  and  is  destined  to  continue  to  have, 
a  similarly  correcting  effect  on  the  naturally  narrow 
conceptions  of  men.  It  tends  to  fry  the  conceit 
out  of  us.  It  has  been  impossible  since  Darwin 
for  any  sane  and  honest  man  to  go  around  brag- 
ging about  having  been  '  made  in  the  image  of  his 
maker,'  or  to  successfully  lay  claim  to  a  more 
honourable  origin  than  the  rest  of  the  creatures  of 
the  earth.  And  if  men  had  accepted  the  logical 
consequences  of  Darwin's  teachings,  the  world 
would  not  to-day — a  half-century  after  his  reve- 
lation— be  filled  with  practices  which  find^their 
only  support  and  justification  in  out-of-date 
traditions.  But  logical  consequences,  as  Huxley 
observes,  are  the  official  scarecrows  of  that  large 
and  prolific  class  of  defectives  usually  known  as 
fools.  The  doctrine  of  evolution  is  accepted  in 
one  form  or  another  by  practically  all  who  think. 
It  is  taught  even  in  school  primers.  But  while 
the  biology  of  evolution  is  scarcely  any  longer 
questioned,  the  psychology  and  ethics  of  the  Dar- 
winian revelation,  though  following  from  the  same 
premises,  and  almost  as  inevitably,  are  yet  to  be 
generally  realised.  Darwin's  revelation,  like  every 
other  revelation  that  has  come  to  the  world,  is 


ETHICS  AND  EVOLUTION          321 

perceived  most  tardily  by  those  working  in  depart- 
ments where  the  phenomena  are  the  most  intan- 
gible and  complicated. 

Darwin  himself  called  '  the  love  for  all  living 
creatures  the  most  noble  attribute  of  man.'  Giant 
as  he  was,  he  perceived  more  clearly  than  any  of 
his  contemporaries,  more  clearly  even  than  his 
successors,  the  ultimate  goal  of  evolving  altruism. 
For  he  says :  '  As  man  advances  in  civilisation, 
and  small  tribes  are  united  into  larger  communities, 
the  simplest  reason  would  tell  each  individual  that 
he  ought  to  extend  his  social  instincts  and  sym- 
pathies to  all  members  of  the  same  nation,  though 
personally  unknown  to  him.  There  is,  then,  only 
an  artificial  barrier  to  prevent  his  sympathies 
extending  to  the  men  of  all  nations  and  races. 
Experience,  however,  shows  us  how  long  it  is,  if 
such  men  are  separated  from  him  by  great  differ- 
ences of  appearance  or  habits,  before  he  looks 
upon  them  as  his  fellow-creatures.  Sympathy 
beyond  the  confines  of  man  is  one  of  the  latest 
moral  acquisitions.  It  is  apparently  unfelt  by 
savages,  except  for  their  pets.  The  very  idea  of 
humanity,  so  far  as  I  could  observe,  was  new  to 
most  of  the  Gauchos  of  the  Pampas.  This  virtue 
seems  to  arise  from  our  sympathies  becoming 
more  tender  and  more  widely  diffused,  until  they 
are  extended  to  all  sentient  beings '  (7). 

The  influences  of  a  doctrine  old  enough  and 
precious  enough  to  have  become  embodied  in  the 
life  and  institutions  of  a  race  persist  generally, 
through  mere  momentum,  long  after  the  substance 

21 


322  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

of  the  doctrine  has  passed  away.  This  is  eminently 
true  of  that  misconception  which  has  come  down 
to  us  regarding  the  nature  and  origin  of  man  and 
his  relations  to  the  rest  of  the  universe.  Darwin 
has  lived,  shed  his  light  over  the  world,  and  passed 
back  to  the  dust  whence  he  came.  Men  no 
longer  believe  that  other  races  and  other  worlds 
were  really  made  for  them.  But  they  continue  to 
act  in  about  the  same  manner  as  they  did  when 
they  did  believe  it.  This  assertion  applies  not 
simply  to  those  half-baked  intelligences  who  have 
only  the  rudest  and  most  antiquated  notions  about 
anything  but  also  to  thousands  of  men  and  women 
who  pretend  to  have  up-to-date  conceptions  of 
themselves  and  the  universe — men  and  women 
noted  even  for  their  activity  in  reminding  others 
of  their  inconsistency — men  and  women  who 

4  Compound  for  sins  they  are  inclined  to, 
By  damning  those  they  have  no  mind  to.' 

The  doctrine  of  Universal  Kinship  is  not  a  new 
doctrine,  born  from  the  more  brilliant  loins  of 
modern  understanding.  It  is  as  old  almost  as 
human  philosophy.  It  was  taught  by  Buddha 
twenty-four  hundred  years  ago.  And  the  teach- 
ings of  this  divine  soul,  spreading  over  the  plains 
and  peninsulas  of  Asia,  have  made  unnumbered 
millions  mild.  It  was  taught  also  by  Pythagoras 
and  all  his  school  of  philosophers,  and  rigidly 
practised  in  their  daily  lives.  Plutarch,  one  of 
the  grandest  characters  of  antiquity,  wrote  several 
essays  in  advocacy  of  it.  In  these  essays,  as  well 


ETHICS  AND  EVOLUTION         323 

as  in  many  passages  of  his  writings  generally,  he 
demonstrates  that  he  was  far  ahead  of  his  con- 
temporaries in  the  breadth  and  intensity  of  his 
moral  nature,  and  in  advance  even  of  all  except  a 
very  few  of  those  living  to-day,  2,000  years  after 
him.  Shelley  among  the  poets  of  modern  times, 
and  Tolstoy  in  these  latter  days,  are  others  among 
the  eminent  adherents  of  this  holy  cause. 

Wherever  Buddhism  prevails,  there  will  be 
found  in  greater  or  less  purity,  as  one  of  the 
cardinal  principles  of  its  founder,  the  doctrine  of 
the  sacredness  of  all  Sentient  Life.  But  the 
Aryan  race  of  the  West  has  remained  steadfastly 
deaf  to  the  pleadings  of  its  Shelleys  and  Tolstoys, 
owing  to  the  overmastering  influence  of  its  anthro- 
pocentric  religions.  Not  till  the  coming  of  Darwin 
and  his  school  of  thinkers  was  there  a  basis 
for  hope  of  a  reformed  world.  To-day  the  planet 
is  ripe  for  the  old-new  doctrine.  Tradition  is 
losing  its  power  over  men's  conduct  and  concep- 
tions as  never  before,  and  Science  is  growing 
more  and  more  influential.  A  central  truth  of 
the  Darwinian  philosophy  is  the  unity  and  con- 
sanguinity of  all  organic  life.  And  during  the 
next  century  or  two  the  ethical  corollary  of  this 
truth  is  going  to  receive  unprecedented  recognition 
in  all  departments  of  human  thought.  Ignorance 
and  Inertia  are  fearful  facts.  They  endure  like 
granite  in  the  human  mind.  But  the  tireless 
chisels  of  evolution  are  invincible.  And  the  time 
will  come  when  the  anthropocentric  customs  and 
conceptions,  which  are  to-day  fashionable 

21— a 


324  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

to  be  'divine/  will  have  nothing  but  a  historic 
existence.  The  movement  to  put  Science  and 
Humanitarianism  in  place  of  Tradition  and 
Savagery,  which  is  so  weak,  languishing,  and 
neglected  to-day,  is  a  movement  which  has  for  its 
ultimate  destiny  the  conquest  of  the  Human 
Species. 

XII.  Conclusion. 

All  beings  are  ends;  no  creatures  are  means. 
All  beings  have  not  equal  rights,  neither  have  all 
men ;  but  all  have  rights.  The  Life  Process  is  the 
End — not  man,  nor  any  other  animal  temporarily 
privileged  to  weave  a  world's  philosophy.  Non- 
human  beings  were  not  made  for  human  beings 
any  more  than  human  beings  were  made  for  non- 
human  beings.  Just  as  the  sidereal  spheres  were 
once  supposed  by  the  childish  mind  of  man  to  be 
unsubstantial  satellites  of  the  earth,  but  are  known 
by  man's  riper  understanding  to  be  worlds  with 
missions  and  materialities  of  their  own,  and  of 
such  magnitude  and  number  as  to  render  terres- 
trial insignificance  frightful,  so  the  billions  that 
dwell  in  the  seas,  fields,  and  atmospheres  of  the 
earth  were  in  like  manner  imagined  by  the  illiterate 
children  of  the  race  to  be  the  mere  trinkets  of 
men,  but  are  now  known  by  all  who  can  interpret 
the  new  revelation  to  be  beings  with  substantially 
the  same  origin,  the  same  natures,  structures,  and 
occupations,  and  the  same  general  rights  to  life  and 
happiness,  as  we  ourselves. 

In  their  phenomena  of  life  the  inhabitants  of 


CONCLUSION  325 

the  earth  display  endless  variety.  They  swim  in 
the  waters,  soar  in  the  skies,  squeeze  among  the 
rocks,  clamber  among  the  trees,  scamper  over  the 
plains,  and  glide  among  the  grounds  and  grasses. 
Some  are  born  for  a  summer,  some  for  a  century, 
and  some  flutter  their  little  lives  out  in  a  day. 
They  are  black,  white,  blue,  golden,  all  the  colours 
of  the  spectrum.  Some  are  wise  and  some  are 
simple ;  some  are  large  and  some  are  microscopic ; 
some  live  in  castles  and  some  in  bluebells ;  some 
roam  over  continents  and  seas,  and  some  doze 
their  little  day-dream  away  on  a  single  dancing 
leaf.  But  they  are  all  the  children  of  a  common 
mother  and  the  co-tenants  of  a  common  world. 
Why  they  are  here  in  this  world  rather  than  some 
place  else ;  why  the  world  in  which  they  find 
themselves  is  so  full  of  the  undesirable ;  and 
whether  it  would  not  have  been  better  if  the  ball 
on  which  they  ride  and  riot  had  been  in  the 
beginning  sterilised,  are  problems  too  deep  and 
baffling  for  the  most  of  them.  But  since  they  are 
here,  and  since  they  are  too  proud  or  too  super- 
stitious to  die,  and  are  surrounded  by  such  cold 
and  wolfish  immensities,  what  would  seem  more 
proper  than  for  them  to  be  kind  to  each  other, 
and  helpful,  and  dwell  together  as  loving  and 
forbearing  members  of  One  Great  Family  ? 

ACT  TOWARD  OTHERS  AS  YOU  WOULD  ACT 
TOWARD  A  PART  OF  YOUR  OWN  SELF. 

This  is  The  Great  Law,  the  all-inclusive  gospel 
of  social  salvation.  It  is  the  rule  of  social  recti- 
tude -nd  perfection  which  has  been  held  up  in 


326  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

greater  or  less  perfection  in  all  ages  by  the  sages 
and  prophets  of  the  human  species. 

Hear  Confucius,  the  giant  of  Mongolia,  and  the 
idol  and  law-giver  of  one-third  of  mankind  : 

'  What  you  do  not  like  when  done  to  yourself  do 
not  do  to  others.' 

And  again  he  says : 

'Do  not  let  a  man  practise  to  those  beneath 
him  that  which  he  dislikes  in  those  above  him.' 

Over  and  over  again  the  illustrious  master 
repeats  these  precepts  to  his  disciples  and 
countrymen. 

In  the  Mahabharata,  the  great  epic  of  the 
Sanskrit,  written  by  Indian  moralists  in  various 
ages,  and  representing  the  accumulated  wisdom  ol 
one  of  the  most  marvellous  of  all  peoples,  we  find 
these  words : 

'  Treat  others  as  thou  wouldst  thyself  be  treated.' 

'  Do  nothing  to  thy  neighbour  which  thou 
wouldst  not  hereafter  have  thy  neighbour  do  to 
thee.' 

'  A  man  obtains  a  rule  of  action  by  looking  upon 
his  neighbour  as  himself.' 

These  same  truths  were  also  taught  by  Jesus, 
that  godlike  Galilean,  the  great  teacher  and 
saviour  of  the  Western  world : 

'  Love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself.' 

'  Do  unto  others  as  you  would  have  others  do 
unto  you.' 

Oh  that  these  words  were  etched  in  fire,  and 
stamped  in  scorching  characters  on  the  dull,  cold 
hearts  of  this  world  1  . 


CONCLUSION  327 

ACT  TOWARD  OTHERS  AS  YOU  WOULD  ACT 
TOWARD  A  PART  OF  YOUR  OWN  SELF. 

Look  upon  and  treat  others  as  you  do  your  own 
hands,  your  own  eyes,  your  very  heart  and  soul 
— with  infinite  care  and  compassion — as  suffering 
and  enjoying  members  of  the  same  Great  Being 
with  yourself.  This  is  the  spirit  of  the  ideal 
universe — the  spirit  of  your  own  being.  It  is 
this  alone  that  can  redeem  this  world,  and  give 
to  it  the  peace  and  harmony  for  which  it  longs. 
Yes, 

'  So  many  gods,  so  many  creeds, 

So  many  paths  that  wind  and  wind, 

While  just  the  art  of  being  kind 

Is  all  the  sad  world  needs.' 

Oh  the  madness,  and  sorrow,  and  unbrotherli- 
ness  of  this  mal-wrought  world  1  Oh  the  poor, 
weak,  poisoned,  monstrous  natures  of  its  children ! 
Who  can  look  upon  it  all  without  pain,  and 
sympathy,  and  consternation,  and  tears  ?  What 
an  opportunity  for  philanthropy,  if  the  'All- 
mighty  One'  of  our  traditions  would  only  set 
about  it ! 

Yes,  do  as  you  would  be  done  by — and  not  to  the 
dark  man  and  the  white  woman  alone,  but  to  the 
sorrel  horse  and  the  gray  squirrel  as  well ;  not  to 
creatures  of  your  own  anatomy  only,  but  to  all 
creatures.  You  cannot  go  high  enough  nor  low 
enough  nor  far  enough  to  find  those  whose  bowed 
and  broken  beings  will  not  rise  up  at  the  coming 
of  the  kindly  heart,  or  whose  souls  will  not  shrink 
and  darken  at  the  touch  of  inhumanity.  Live  and 


328  THE  ETHICAL  KINSHIP 

let  live.  Do  more.  Live  and  help  live.  Do  to 
beings  below  you  as  you  would  be  done  by  beings  above 
you.  Pity  the  tortoise,  the  katydid,  the  wild-bird, 
and  the  ox.  Poor,  undeveloped,  untaught  crea- 
tures !  Into  their  dim  and  lowly  lives  strays  of 
sunshine  little  enough,  though  the  fell  hand  of 
man  be  never  against  them.  They  are  our  fellow- 
mortals.  They  came  out  of  the  same  mysterious 
womb  of  the  past,  are  passing  through  the  same 
dream,  and  are  destined  to  the  same  melancholy 
end,  as  we  ourselves.  Let  us  be  kind  and  merciful 
to  them. 

'  Wilt  thou  draw  near  the  nature  of  the  gods  ? 
Draw  near  them,  then,  in  being  merciful ; 
Sweet  mercy  is  nobility's  true  badge.' 

Let  us  be  true  to  our  ideals,  true  to  the  spirit 
of  Universal  Compassion — whether  we  walk  with 
the  lone  worm  wandering  in  the  twilight  of  con- 
sciousness, the  feathered  forms  of  the  fields  and 
forests,  the  kine  of  the  meadows,  the  simple 
savage  on  the  banks  of  the  gladed  river,  the 
political  blanks  whom  men  call  wives,  or  the 
outcasts  of  human  industry. 

Oh  this  poor  world,  this  poor,  suffering,  ignorant, 
fear-filled  world  1  How  can  men  be  blind  or 
deranged  enough  to  think  it  is  a  good  world? 
How  can  they  be  cold  and  satanic  enough  to  be 
unmoved  by  the  groans  and  anguish,  the  writhing 
and  tears,  that  come  up  from  its  unparalleled 
afflictions  ? 

But   the  world  is  growing  better.    And  in  the 


CONCLUSION  329 

Future — in  the  long,  long  ages  to  come — IT  WILL 
BE  REDEEMED!  The  same  spirit  of  sympathy 
and  fraternity  that  broke  the  black  man's  manacles 
and  is  to-day  melting  the  white  woman's  chains 
will  to-morrow  emancipate  the  working  man  and 
the  ox;  and,  as  the  ages  bloom  and  the  great 
wheels  of  the  centuries  grind  on,  the  same  spirit 
shall  banish  Selfishness  from  the  earth,  and 
convert  the  planet  finally  into  one  unbroken  and 
unparalleled  spectacle  of  PEACE,  JUSTICE,  and 
SOLIDARITY. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
(i)  SPENCER  :    Principles  of  Ethics,  vol.  i. ;  New  York, 


(2)  MAINE:  Early  History  of  Institutions  ;  New  York,  1869. 

(3)  TENNENT:  Natural  History  of  Ceylon ;  London,  1861. 

(4)  MYERS  :  Ancient  History,  part  i. ;  Boston,  1899. 

(5)  MYERS  :  Ancient  History,  part  ii. ;  Boston,  1899. 

(6)  PRESTON  AND  DODGE  :  The  Private  Life  of  the  Romans  ; 

Boston,  1896. 

(7)  DARWIN:  Descent  of  Man ;  London,  1874. 

(8)  HAMLEY:  Our  Poor  Relations  ;  Boston,  187*. 


5.  MAMMALS 


VIII.  VERTE- 
BRATES 


•II.  Primates:  Man,  monkey. 

10.  Carnivora :  Dog,  lion,  skunk. 
9.  Ungulates :  Ox,  horse,  deer. 
8.  Sirenians:  Dugong. 
7.  Cetaceans :  Whale,  porpoise. 
6.  Chiroptera:  Bat 
5.  Insectivora  :  Mole,  hedgehog. 
4.  Rodents :  Rat,  mouse,  beaver. 
3.  Edentates:  Sloth,  ant-eater. 
2.  Marsupials:  Kangaroo, 

opossum. 
I.  Monotremes:    Duckbill, 

echidna. 
4.  BIRDS  :  Ostrich,  owl,  lark. 

3.  REPTILES  :  Snake,  lizard,  turtle. 

2.  AMPHIBIANS  :  Frog,  salamander. 

1.  FISHES  :  Shark,  salmon,  lung-fish. 

4.  ARACHNIDS  :  Spider,  tick,  king-crab. 

3.  INSECTS  :  Ant,  fly,  bug,  beetle. 

2.  CRUSTACEANS  :  Crayfish,  crab,  barnacle. 
I.  MVRIAPODS:  Centiped,  milliped. 

VI.  MOLLUSKS  :  Clam,  oyster,  snail,  squid, 

V.  WORMS  :  Earthworm,  leech,  trichina. 
IV.  ECHINODERMS  :  Star-fish,  sea-urchin. 
III.  CELENTERATES  :  Hydra,  coral,  jelly-fish. 

II.  PORIFERA:  Sponge. 

I.  PROTOZOA  :  Amoeba,  euglena,  paramecium. 


VII.  ARTHRO- 
PODS 


CLASSES  OF  ANIMALS 


Wooly*baired  Men 
(Ulctrichi) 


Straight-haired  Men 

(Lisscitiifki.) 


Odd-toed 
Ungulates 


Primitive 
Cetaceaus-i  / 

SiremansJ 


Even=toed 
Ungulates 


Ungulates 


Man -like Apes 

New  World        Old  World 
Apes  Apes 


Cftruivora 


V. 

Seals 


Edentates     Rodents 


Lenurs 


Bats      Insectivora 

I U_ 

Pi-inlitive 
C^rnivora 


Herbi 
Placejntals 

Herbi 
Marsupials 


Monotremes 


()«trich-liko 


Amphibians 

(Mvdern 


Insects 


Spiders 


Trilobites 


Shark -like  fishes 

Primitive  fishes 
(lamprey) 


Chordates 


Mollusks 


Echmodenn* 

J 


Sponges 

\s 
Annelid  Worms 

Flat  Worms 

Celeuterates 

1 

"Cast  raea" 
Vob^ox 

Protozoa 

GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS 


Toiacep.330. 


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